1204 » MORE Land Flipping Secrets Revealed by Expert Ray Zhang!

Joe: Hey, how you doing, guys? Joe McCall here for another Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast. I’m excited about this one again, as usual. But this one is a special one because this is going to be part two with a special friend of ours, Ray Zhang. I had him on a couple of months ago and it’s one of my most popular, downloaded viewed podcasts that I’ve ever done. And Ray is a land investing ninja who I think he lives in Florida. We’ll ask him here in a minute. But he does a lot of deals down in Florida on that podcast, if you remember, and we’ll link in the show notes. If this if you’re watching this on YouTube, we’ll link to the show notes of where that episode is, because I want to really encourage you to watch that. Now, in that episode, we delve deep into actually looking for how to pick your counties and how to pick the markets and how to make the offers and all of that. And the feedback was off the charts. It’s amazing. Now there’s a lot of different ways you can do vacant land. I typically like going after rural, cheap, rural, recreational, vacant land, you know, 1 to 20 acres way out in the sticks, and we buy it for $0.25 on the dollar. Ray does a little different thing where he likes to buy the little quarter acre, lots more in the suburbs that are selling for, you know, he might buy him for 25,000 from 50 or something like that. So he has a little different way to do it. I interviewed another guy the other day, Pete, who likes to only target lands that are vacant lots that are ten plus acres. And so this is going to be a great discussion talking about the different ways to do vacant land deals. And I also brought my land investing business partner, Matt Bills. So you guys are going to hear from Ray and Matt. Matt is a guy that I’ve known from church for a long, long time, super smart guy. And him and I have been I kind of helped him start doing houses a long time ago, didn’t like it. And then he said, I said, Hey, let’s talk about doing some land together. And he liked that idea. So we’ve done a ton of deals and so I wanted to bring Matt and Ray on because a few months ago after Ray did that podcast, we went out and did some of what Ray taught in that podcast. And I think we have four or five deals under contract. We made a lot of mistakes. It was pretty ugly. And we’ll talk about that because like we way offered way too high over often for these properties. We sent blind offers. Normally when I do it and I the way I teach it, we send neutral letters. It says, Hey, do you want to sell your land? Please call or text. This 24 hour recorded voicemail calls come in. Then we sent him an offer. We did a different or we sent blind offers and we got it way wrong. And so normally, like I said, we go out and do rural, recreational, large lots in the sticks. Ray does some more smaller lots in cities. And so we’re going to be asking him questions about, okay, what did we do wrong? What could we do better? And I think you’re going to learn a lot from this. Call you guys good with that as I’m going live right now, we should be going out to Facebook and YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter. And pretty soon we’ll be able out to go out there on Instagram, which would be cool. Now, if you’re watching this live, I want you to please type in any questions you have in the comments down below. Say hi, Tell us where you are from. But you’re going to have questions, you’re going to have comments. And so if there’s good comments in there, I’m going to bring them up here on the screen. And we can ask Ray or you can ask me and Matt some of the questions that you have about what we’re talking about. Okay. One more thing, too, as well. One of my free giveaways, I always try to give something away on my podcast. If you go to simple land contract dot com, simple land contract dot com, you’re going to get for free. No strings attached. Just give me your name and email the letter and the contract, The one page contract that I send to sellers on our vacant land deals. This is the same contract we use. This was a deal in Suwannee County, Florida. We sold it on owner financing, making 250 grand a month, and our profit on this should be about 12,450 deals. This is a deal that Matt actually helped with. So yeah, you get this contract and letter for free if you just go to simple land contract com simple land contract dot com. So if you’re watching this again on YouTube Facebook, give us the thumbs up like this video comment down below and subscribe to the channel. I’d really appreciate that. Also on YouTube is where you will see the link to the previous podcast that we did with Ray. Good. All right, now for the intro, let’s bring on Matt and Ray. How are you guys doing?

Matt: Yeah, awesome, Joe.

Joe: So I’m not sure how you’re looking at it, but in the upper right corner is Matt Bills. Matt lives in Saint Louis. Super nice guy. Then doing land deals with me part time for a couple of three or four years. Now he does other side hustles that he does get entrepreneur Ray down below. How you doing, Ray?

Ray: Good, Joe. How are you?

Joe: Good. So, Ray, where do you live? Ray’s in Florida.

Ray: I live in Florida. I actually. I just closed for deals in Solano County. So when and myself, that was let go.

Joe: I love that. Because, like, I just had a coaching call today with about 50 something students. And one of the common questions I get with new students is, Oh, what about competition? You’re teaching this now, Everybody knows about it and we’re all going to be going into the same county. It is not going to work. How am I? And they start freaking out, right? Yeah, You’re I. Just showed you a deal. We did. This was probably a year or two ago, Matt. Remember when Swanny County, Florida, and Guy says, Yeah, we did. How many deals in Suwannee County.

Ray: I just closed four, so again, that’s the one. Yeah.

Joe: Have you flipped one or sold one yet?

Ray: I haven’t yet. Yeah, I just bought it. So as far as competition, I asked the same question to Tom Crow a long time ago. I said I don’t want competition. I just want to chose a market that, you know, no competition. I can do a lot of deals. Right. And he told me, Hey, Ray, you need to think about if you’re a jewelry dealer, would you rather to open your store in the middle of the desert or in the Fifth Avenue, you know, in New York? Right. So your choice.

Joe: Yeah, that’s a real good analogy. Yeah, I like that a lot. So it’s competition over? No collaboration. It’s not competition. Collaboration. One of the things you’ll find when you go into counties where there are a lot of lane investors, you’ll find that those counties, sometimes most of the time can be easier to sell deals because it is also can be easier to find people that can take drone footage. You know, it’s easier to find realtors. People tell me all the time, oh, I can’t list my property on the MLS because I haven’t bought it yet. Well, we just what was the county map that we just listed a property with the realtor that we haven’t closed on yet.

Ray: That was Charlotte County, Florida.

Joe: Yeah. So now a lot of investors do deals in Charlotte County, Florida. Some of you listening to this might be like, Oh, man, I just picked Charlotte County and now you’re talking about it and it’s going to ruin it for everybody. But okay, so what I wanted to talk about, I’m glad you guys could be here is Ray, Matt and I couple three months ago, we listened to your podcast and we decided to go implement it. And what you taught back then was like, find out where there’s areas of a hot lot of activity and go down to the subdivision level, pull a list, find out the average price that people are paying for lots and that subdivision and then send them an offer at like I don’t remember what we used 35 40% or something. I think for over 40% of the average subdivision price per acre. And we did that. And guess what? Like anything that we ever do new for the first time, we make mistakes. But you know what? Even with all of the stupid mistakes we’ve done, we have four deals under contract, maybe five. Right. All right. And it’s like I think it’s kind of embarrassing. Matt and I, we sometimes work out in the mornings together, and all I hear from him is like, we got another one, like we offered to or two or three times more than it’s even worth. Yeah. And now Matt has to be the one to talk him down and say, No, I’m sorry, we can’t do that. So yeah, we made a lot of mistakes by doing that. But even with the mistakes, we still have deals under contract. We’re starting to market them right now. We’re starting to get leads on and we’re starting to put them on the MLS too as well. So Matt, talk a little bit about what you know when we’re getting leads. Now calls from these sellers. They the house, I mean, the vacant lot is worth 20. We’re giving them an offer for like 15, but we need to be way down it five or something like that. Right. So like how talk about be honest. Like are these conversations uncomfortable and weird and how are you handling it?

Matt: Yeah, I’ll just say from my perspective, you know, I got a lot from Ray, actually, and he recommended a couple of books that I read and shared a couple of videos with me and like tips on talking to these sellers and negotiating these prices. So that was really helpful. But it’s still if you’re if you’re new to it and you’re not used to it, it’s still awkward. But you have to understand that the more you do it, the easier it gets and the more comfortable you get. It’s really just having conversations and connecting with people. So, you know, I’m starting to get a lot more comfortable with it. But we’re offering sometimes like three times more than we should have offered on the property. That’s a little bit interesting trying to talk them down. Now on the flip side, and we probably got way more calls coming in because of that. Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know, Ray, if you’ve had the same thing happen. So some people were angry about it, some people weren’t. But it did get the it got the phone ring, It got people responding to us. And but yeah, going through the questions that you asked them, you know, do you have sewer? Is there a sewer or do you guys have you ever been to the property, Is there water? You know, you kind of like try to pick things that you know, whether it’s good or bad, you just want them to answer and you want to put it in their mind that, you know, oh, yeah, it actually doesn’t have water. Or maybe it is the smallest lot on the block. It’s not a corner a lot. It’s just like every other lot. Or it does have trees or it doesn’t have trees. These are all things that Ray talked about on the past episode of the podcast that he was on. So I definitely got a lot from that. So yeah, talking to them, it’s really been a kind of a learning curve for me, just getting in the grind and talking to them and.

Joe: Like I should clarify too, you know, we normally send neutral letters. I might have already clarified that, but we normally send a letter. If you want to sell your lot, call us and we’ll send them an offer. So we send them an offer and only talk to them after they get it. So this was different, right? Right. Let me ask you, Ray, you know, is are you teaching coach people how to do what you do? Is this a common problem that they have as well?

Ray: Yeah. So I hear the thing, you know, that nobody can absolutely make 100. Accurate offers. That’s impossible. So whenever you do that wrong, you just have to tell the seller you did it for hire and you know it didn’t know. So here’s the thing. Check it out after the call with you. I have a student challenge for me is that offer is the only thing that’s most important. I said it’s not. Let me prove it to you. So I intentionally mailed to a economy in Arizona ten times more for more. That’s a pile for more than I supposed to offer. So all of those are land is road cheaper and worth about 4 to 5 grand each. So I supposed to offer about 15 to 1300 for those lots, but at a zero intentionally offer that and then you know, you can imagine was my response rate I got so many calls and then when they pick up the phone I only say a one sentence. How mad. I’m sorry I made a mistake on the pricing. What I can do right now for that land is way less than the offer price and go how many deals I got? I sent 3500 letters out. I got 11 deals from four sellers. So a lot of people thing offer is the most important thing. But here’s the thing. The owner already got so many offers from other people. Yeah, no, they no, if they want to sign up for your marriage right quick and this is pretty much how much they can do to get. Right. So your offer or whatnot, I’ll find them. You know, just. All right.

Joe: So Amir asks a good question here. What are these names of these books that you sent to Matt to learn some sales skills.

Ray: Yeah. So there are three books I recommended are Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.

Joe: Never split the difference.

Ray: And Go for No.

Joe: Go for No.

Ray: I think by Richard Fenton I think the author’s name and another the third book is what Tom told me is called Flip the Script. It’s not the Pretty Girl one, by the way. It is a yellow book. Yellow book, all yellow. So don’t buy the pretty girl one.

Joe: I see it here by Laila Lee. It’s not her. So this one is by Oren Klaff.

Ray: Absolutely.

Joe: All right. I got the I have one of those books. I’m going to buy that. Flip the script. I’ve not read that one yet.

Ray: Yeah. They talk about a concept really important, which is always be leaving. So not about faith. It’s about you try to leave instead of trying to course always. Right. So if you try to pause like do go a more a girl follow you all the all the way I kind of get annoyed right so you try to use that of being dads. You try to leave and try to have the seller convince you to buy the land instead of you always push for buying the land.

Joe: Excellent. Good, good. All right. So, Matt, you had some questions. Would you can you kind of go through some of these questions you had? Sure. And ask Ray. Sure. Yet bring them up here as well.

Matt: So, Ray, one of the things I wanted to ask you about being that you well, you live in Florida, and I know you do quite a few deals in Florida. Have you run into many issues? Like do you worry about flood zones very much when you’re looking at buying property? Is that a concern for you? And maybe you could talk to that?

Ray: Yeah, flood zone is a must check and especially the wetland. So sometimes the awkward thing is the wetland is not always wet. So if you check Google Maps sometime the land looks perfectly fine. So there is a website I can share with you and it’s called wetland checker. So you open it up and put the address and they will show you in color that is aware of that. So I typically don’t ask people to buy a wetland because I just call the wetland. There’s a bias for that. But guys, so many times I was under a contract five times with five different buyers. Yeah, you know, and the last buyer didn’t check maybe, and I hope he doesn’t listen to this guy.

Matt: We had the same experience with some wetlands. Property is very difficult to sell. It takes a very specific buyer to buy that property. But in terms of flood zones like flood zone or flood zone, even in the Florida area where people might need flood insurance if they get a mortgage for their for their home, is that something you steer away from or how do you navigate that?

Ray: You just have to ask the realtors if that’s a real concern and specifically asked the realtors who sold land nearby the land you want to buy because if it is flood zone, they will be a huge area, right? So you also asked the realtor specifically if that’s an issue and sometime it’s not a huge issue and sometimes it is.

Joe: Yeah, that’s been interesting because some of these lots we heard from someone saying, hey, they just recently classified this area as a flood zone and if you get insurance, it’s going to cost an extra thousand dollars a month for whoever builds on that property. So that kind of threw us for a loop. And then. But you’re saying just talk to the realtors and get the story on the ground.

Ray: And you can use that for again, the sellers tell the seller, Hey, man, I just find out. One thing I hate to say about your land is in the. I don’t know about you, but what do you think? The best you can do? Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

Joe: Okay, good. Well, another question you have, Matt.

Matt: Yeah. So, speaking of realtors, I was wondering, do you have any good tips on finding good realtors to use on the sell side for you? So any kind of way that you source them or find them? Because not every realtor has the same skill level or quality or carries the same amount.

Ray: Yeah. So the only way I find realtors is they actually sold the land in the same subdivision. So if they haven’t sold a land in the same subdivision, I typically don’t contact them. And when you go to Rathburn, you can find that information. So let’s say your street is street A and you put the Street A’s name in your breath and you can find out all the sold listings. So click that and find who sold the listing spot. There are two realtors normally, so there is a guy who left the property for sale and the guy who actually bought it. So you want to contact the realtor who will actually bring the buyer to the listing agent? The buyer agent, Not the listing agent because everyone can list the property, right? So that’s easy. But the thing that the realtor is where the cash buyer is, is a go.

Joe: I got a question here I want to ask you now, and they’re getting a reason why we’re asking these questions is we’re used to flipping properties that are rural out in the country in the sticks. And it’s just different when you’re in the suburbs doing little quarter acre lots. Right. And the thing that’s blowing me away and I cannot figure out for the life of me is how to price these things sometimes. Yeah, because you’ll be in the same little neighborhood there and I can show it to you. Maybe I’ll pull it up in a minute. You see some properties that are selling for 15, 20, 25 grand. And down the street you see one that sells for 50, 70, 80 grand. And you’re like, Who is buying this same lot for double or triple what these other people are selling them for? And these are recent sales. These are in the last 90 days. So what is your pricing strategy when you’re doing infill lots where there’s a lot of cops and sometimes they’re all over the board? We’re used to rural where you don’t get as many comps, right? So what’s your pricing philosophy when you’re advertising and selling home video?

Ray: So before I actually talk to the I believe before I actually buy it, I will go to assessor website. I would look at this as a rally and I will and has a size value, right? So I typically, you know, normally a size value is not equal to the land value, but sometimes the land value is more than the size of audio. But I try to buy it below the assessed value if, if I can’t. Right. So if I buy a below that, I know I’m pretty safe, right? So that’s the first thing I check. And the second thing I tag as want to see was a low and then the nearby sold. Right So you have the lawyers is let’s say there’s land nearby. So it is 10,000 and there’s another one sold for 6000. And I call the realtor and asking him why? Why does he saying, you know, why, why he sold the land for such a cheap price. So there’s something wrong with the neighborhood or there’s something wrong with the land. So if there’s something wrong with the land, that’s fine, because I can we use the comps in nearby my land. Right. But if there’s something wrong with the neighborhood, I well be very careful. Right. That’s the second thing I check. The third thing I check is the for sale price nearby. So if everything my strategy is I well it’s a property may well be the lowest for a sale in the whole area so I can sell my land very quick so I want to see it was so for sale right now, let’s say everything is selling for 20 grand. And if I know right away if I want to sell this land, I want to put it for maybe 18,000 or 17,000. Right. But how much I’m going to buy this, I want to make a profit. So I better by at least half of that price. Right. And then I attack again about the comparables. And the last thing I do is I’ll call the nearby three realtors to confirm buy. You know how much I ask that realtor this question if I want to sell this very quick? What do you think the minimum I can sell this for? I don’t want maximum because a realtor has a tendency to always maximum the landscape. Right? So that’s a fourth thing I do. But after all this fourth thing I do, I know I’m pretty say sobriety, for example, I just bought a land assassin idea is 6000 and I bought it for three. But everything for sale is 45 and the solid and the is 35. So you see how big difference that size, the value and the land value. But I’m pretty cerebral and inside of that price range, Right.

Joe: So yeah, I am. I want to show you something here and I’m going to share my screen again. Let me pull this out. I think this will be is related to what we were just talking about here. And I can do it. I swear I can. Go on, Joe. All right. This is Charlotte County, Florida Corner. And let’s see, we’ve got a property right in the center of this map. If I look at active and I and I said, under 100 grand, I just want to remove the there are some here that are for some reason, like a million bucks. I’m looking at vacant land between like 775 square feet and half. These are like quarter acre size lots and days on Zillow. Really. There’s a lot here. That may freak people out. And this is sorted from low to high. And you can see these little lots are sold selling for 13, nine, 14, nine, 15 grand. Okay. If I change this to souls and you have to do so in the last 9 to 6 months, a lot of good sold activity. This looks to me like, oh, this is great. But if I scroll down here, this is what blows me away. Who buys these lots for, you know, 48 grand. Now it’s on the water there. They’ll give. Maybe that explains things, but, you know, you could. It varies so wildly so. Part of the problem I think some people have is when they’re relying on price to give them the value they’re not looking at. Okay, well, this is a corner lot. This is on the water or whatnot. So if you’re looking at a property here and you see solids that are like 6907 grand, ten grand, I’ll just tell you how I look at this and then you tell me if I’m off or not. Like, this is what investors are buying these things for. And if I switch to for sale and I do days on Zillow any and I got a little property similar in size down here in this in the middle of this map here this is my competition and I’m looking at this thinking, all right, so if we want to sell it fast, we should probably list our property for $12,000. Is that being too aggressive or should we try to be at like maybe 14 or 15 grand because that’s where these are? Does that make sense?

Ray: Yeah. So I would try to stay closer to the target property. But I do see your concern. I want to find out maybe just.

Joe: So we get a little more, is what you’re saying.

Ray: Yeah. So mean a little bit more because you know, you own the property is super close, but you know, that could be a different area. But as far as I can see in this area, the lower is for sale is about 15. Yeah. So, you know, the periphery players, your ads is about 13 if you want to see all of this. And you know, this is a while. The factors I consider if I can only list this for 13,000, how much am going to buy this? Right. So and then I would look at the sold and of course, the closer to the river, the more expensive the lot. Yeah, right. And I only look at about three months, not six months.

Joe: Okay. 90 days. Yeah. And there’s one sold here for 10,500.

Ray: Yeah. So that even decreased my expectation. I was expecting about 13 and right now I would go by 11. So you are, you have, you have to sell this land for 11. How much. I’m going to buy it. Maybe about 4 to 5 And then that’s your baseline. This is the top selling and then you negotiate on top of that, hoping to get even lower. This is not like you’re not telling. So this is what I tell to everyone when you negotiate. Do not set a bar for yourself. Right? People always talk about there’s a small number of maximum allowable offer, but even if you have that number in mind, you are tend to go to that number. You know, I mean, that’s why I can get a super cheap deals that people don’t even believe because I don’t have a number in mind before I talk to the seller. I try to get one thing only as low as possible to the point that I don’t even believe I can go that for that price.

Joe: And you make them come up with the number, correct?

Ray: They come up with the number first and then I will come up with a super low anchor that I feel like I’m super comfortable to throw that number. So if you say, if you are the seller, you tell me, Hey, the best I can do is 4000 and they’ll be probably like, I don’t know if I can do a four because of this and that and this. You know, I was thinking about I was in the 100 range, you know, I was stop talking. I didn’t give you the offer. And but if you stop talking, the seller will keep talking to you and they’ll be like, oh, that’s super low. And then you cannot do that. And then I interrupt them. I will say, Hey Joe, I know you can now do that. I’m in the ideal world right now. Now in the reality. I’m just kidding. Right? So let me ask you this, Joe. How much closer do you think you can get to that number? Right. So I throw out super low over and try to drag him, right? I try to pull him in. I will I go to his side. Right. And another thing I want to say is called interruption. So we are all married right now. Hopefully a married man for you about head on this.

Joe: Or maybe so.

Ray: So when we are dealing with our wife and then sometime we have this argument and then when we have the argument, you feel like is we are now going to get out of this loop because we’re always angry and talk about things that we focus on. But all of a sudden your kids come in. I didn’t interrupt you guys. And after a few minutes you’re like, what we’re angry about? So this is called pattern interruption, you know, philosophy or negotiation. So you want to do that with the seller. So. If he is stuck with the number or if he’s super firm on that price and let’s say a 4000, there is absolutely no way you can convince him to go lower. So what do I do? I interrupt him. I would be like, Hey, what are you going to do in Valentine’s Day? You know something in Valentine’s Day or you know your new Year, right? So I would talk about something completely irrelevant and throw them out of focus on the fryer and then talk about that for a minute and 5 minutes. I would be like, Hey, you know what? I really cannot do that, Father. What do you think the bastard can do if I pay your cash? Right. So you bring them back and back and forth. Then they were familiar. Forgot about that firm price. So it really worked out for me very well using this kind of tricks.

Joe: So. Okay, that’s. I love that. I love that. Sales one on one. And let me ask you that. If you’re going to sell a property for 11 grand, you’re going to want to buy it around four, Is that right? So that gives you amount of $7,000 spread. Are you still going to hire a realtor to advertise that property for you at 11?

Ray: Probably not that long. Yeah.

Joe: Would do that on your own.

Ray: Yeah, I just the market on the neighbors and whoever bought the land, the neighbors, you know post on Facebook, you know.

Joe: Yeah. This is for everybody out there. I was talking to a student who’s done a lot of land deals and he said one of the things he does is that he has he tells his friends and his wife’s friends, Hey, I’ll pay you $100 if you sell our vacant lot, because you know how hard it is sometimes to put properties on Facebook Marketplace. I hear students complain about this all the time. You know, they get taken down or we get complaints or whatever, but they get what this guy does is he pays his friends $100 if they bring him a buyer. So they’ll put the same property, like he’ll have multiple people put the same property on Facebook marketplace from their personal profile. And that actually works. So you don’t have to worry anymore about trying to get through the Facebook walls, you know what I’m saying? Does this make it in there?

Ray: Yeah, Facebook is hard.

Joe: Yes, it’s very, very hard. But what if you found somebody who’s a friend who’s been on Facebook for 15 years or whatever, and they post a property on Facebook marketplace in that area, it goes through. So he says, like he would sell most of his deals that way, having his friends post them and then he would pay them $500. So they would just handle the incoming messages. When they came in through Facebook Messenger, he would set the person would send would write down their name and send them the phone number.

Ray: Yes.

Joe: Something to think about.

Matt: Awesome.

Joe: Matt, do you have any more questions?

Matt: Well, let’s see. Regarding what you just talked about, Ray. One of the things I’ve encountered a lot is people have this sort of sentiment, but the price they pay for the property, they think that is the value of the property. So I get this a lot where they say I won’t sell it for anything less than what I bought it for. So what would you say? What’s your like? How do you approach that?

Ray: So first of all, when you download the mailing list, how many years they have to hold the land for?

Joe: We normally on this list we did, I think was it five or ten years? Matt I think it was ten years. They’ve held it for over ten years.

Ray: Okay. Ten years is a long time. Normally I you know, I do it five years and above and normally they don’t have that question and Yeah. So some sometime they say like hey I you know I have other realtor you might contact me for this land or I pay them as much. And a lot of people are interested in this price already. I’m asking them, Hey, Wade, why you haven’t sold it yet. Right. So, yeah, you just ask them why they keep keeping that. And the thing is, when people if you want to motivate something, someone to do something. So there are two things that you can do it. So you increase their pain and the increase their pleasure. So. So if you increase their pain of holding the land, there’s a reason they call you, right? So why do they call? You had to find out. And you have to find out what’s the reason behind why they want to sell the land. And if they say, Oh, I am super away from the land I live, or like in New York, Milan, in Florida, and you’ll be like, Hey, do you have to pay some sort of nuisance lien or some type of if you don’t cover grass, the city gave you a fine and just increase their pain more, right? More of them. Yeah.

Matt: Move them away from pain and toward pleasure basically.

Ray: Yeah. You increase that pain now. Yeah. It now remove the pain from them. So if you increase the pain more of holding the land and they don’t want to hold on. Right. Right. Yeah. So and then you can ask a question like, hey Mads, I know we’re going to talk about cash offers, let’s say after we closed the deal. And what are you going to do with the money? So right now what you’re doing right now is that you increase their pleasure. Adam. Imagine what they’re going to do with the money after they close it.

Matt: Right. Yeah, I like that.

Ray: You know, So I went through something like that and, you know, just find out what their pain point is and you increase that.

Matt: Yeah, I think what I found and. Of locating that pinpoint point that works well right out of the gate. I try to ask them, So why did you buy the lot? Were you planning to build your dream home there? Was this an investment? So then right away they kind of dropped their guard down and then they just started telling me their story. Yeah, I bought this ten years ago. I thought I was going to move there. And I live in the state far away and I’m just paying the taxes on it. So you’re kind of uncovering where they are in the process. Like, are they really a motivated seller kind of uncovering like, yeah, they’ve been paying taxes, they don’t like that. So then you can kind of talk about that. So that that that has worked well for me, that question Absolutely.

Ray: I was I wrote on my board there are five things you can create that incent engagement with people. The first thing is encourage their dreams. The second thing is justify their failure, right? And then the third thing is align their fears and the four things confirm their suspicious. And then the last thing is health. They’re all help. They’re all rocks. They’re an enemy. Right? So I combine all of this with, you know, negotiation. So if they tell me a thing, you know something, they’re like, I’ll I’ll be aligned with them. Right. Right. So if they have an enemy and they say the taxes of their enemy. Right. So I will be aligned with that enemy. Right. So you do that and just treat your seller as a friend and you’re going to create a miracles and you just want to go there. I’ve got a deal sometime inside of the right.

Joe: Right. Yeah, that’s good. That’s really good. That reminds me two of the questions I would ask sellers like, Dang, it sounds like a real nice house when, when I used to talk to write stories for house, it sounds like a real nice house. Why would you even want to sell this? Or then ask them. I’m sure if it’s listed, I’m sure you’ve gotten tons of showings and a lot of interest in this property because it’s been on the market for 90 days. Right. So anyways, asking those questions and probing and figuring out their why, what are they going to do when they get it, Why do they need to sell it? Do they need to sell it now? Is this a now thing or a later thing? What’s more, I them the price or selling it quickly. And then I usually just end with like sounds like, you know, you’ve got a great property here. You should just listen with an agent Again, we talked about at the beginning you’re pulling away, right? That’s why you just listed with the realtor. Why haven’t you sold it yet? You’re not in a hurry to sell this thing, right? You’ve got lots of time. You don’t. You don’t need the money right away, Right?

Matt: Right. Yeah. Alex Hormozi says he who needs the sale the most has the least leverage. So it’s kind of like that. Always be leaving. Like you don’t need it right here. Vibe is. Oh, no problem. Like, I don’t need it. You should probably just sell that with a realtor you want. If you want market value, that’s probably your best bet. Yeah, That’s the same kind of attitude that you’re talking about. Yeah.

Joe: Yeah. I call it being I call it being the reluctant buyer. What were you going to say, Ray?

Ray: No, I say I just I when people want to pull away, you want to pull away further, right? So you feel you want to you don’t want to sell for that price you’re telling? I’m I don’t even want a buyer at that price.

Joe: So that’s cool. Matt, do you have any other questions for Ray?

Matt: Let me check here. I was going to ask one thing you and I were I thought might be a good question is now that you’ve had a couple months of your coaching program going on and you’ve had to teach multiple students and coached them through this, has your process changed at all of how you started doing these deals or is everything still the same?

Ray: It’s pretty much the same. We have seen some very good results and I think the more you know, the more you teach, the more you learn, right? So through all this process, I have learned so much about learned investing yourself. And I got super clear on the whole process right now compared to I don’t know what to teach by then. Right. So but right now I’m super clear. Let’s say the valuation of the land, there are so many things we look at before we actually buy the land instead of, you know, just gambling, Right?

Matt: Gotcha.

Joe: Yeah, that’s good.

Matt: Yeah. One other thing that we you did touch on briefly already, for example, being so neighborhood specific with your pricing. So it’s like this one neighborhood might be have a totally different price than one street over in a different neighborhood. Currently we have I think it’s a quarter acre deal that we just got a signed contract for and all the other three acre deals that I’ve seen in Port Charlotte, maybe the lowest for sale is probably 14,000, 15,000 somewhere around there. This particular neighborhood, the lowest I can find is like 33,000. So how much how believable, Like, do I do I really base off that? Because then I could buy it for a little bit more, write off that neighborhood price in your experience.

Ray: Yeah. So you need to know why it was much higher or why the neighbor is so much lower, right?

Matt: Right.

Ray: Yeah. So you start like I would assume there is a lot of water, right? And the more close to the water, the more land value is. But you know, you always want to be super cautious as far as those big counties and Charlotte county is the biggest county in the whole country. Right. Charlotte county and Lake Lee County. You know, Florida does sort of like wind up to our eye. So, yeah. So you just have to be really careful because. You know, some when, when there are so many for sale, your land will be buried inside of north for sale. And that’s when it comes to really the price you purchased the land you know, and I would ask as many in real terms as possible before I bought I buy this land and I really want to be very passive. I was a coward. Very passive, No. Yeah. Before I buy it, I’m very, very, you know, just make sure that everything is as good before I actually purchase the land.

Joe: I would imagine to you when you go into a any new county. This is a normal learning curve, isn’t it, Ray? Like if you’re going into a new state in the new, new county, they all have their own unique quirks. Right? And this is something that every investor just has to learn as they go into a new area. Like Matt and I, we made some really crazy offers on some properties in Northern California that we thought were amazing. This is Northern California who would not want to own property here? It’s gorgeous. But we offered way too much and we had to cancel a couple of them. We saw a couple and still made a profit on them. We didn’t lose any money like now if we were to go back into that county again, we know what we know how to price these things, right? We know what to ignore and what to pay attention to.

Ray: Are you talking about Bryant Square county?

Joe: No, it was Siskiyou County, wasn’t to.

Ray: Yeah, okay. Yeah. So in North Carolina, South Carolina.

Joe: North California, sorry.

Ray: California. Okay. Yeah. So there are some states I would just do a neutral letter that so many subdivisions that are to the opera. So like South Carolina, North Carolina, I always do a neutral letter. And, you know, if you have to ask me of our suggestion, I would encourage you guys to go more like more land as far as the land value go more, you know, So instead of the.

Joe: Like higher priced property.

Ray: Higher price. Yes. So doing deals like, you know, for example, in in Florida, there’s areas like Flagler county, Citrus County and Brevard County, those land are selling for 30 grand and Flagler like where Tom lives, Port St. Lucie and those areas is super expensive, right? So on those type of land, if you got a deal, you can you can make it right. But yeah.

Joe: Yeah, I interviewed a guy who I love. It’s fascinating to me doing these podcasts because you see everybody having their own little form of preferences, right? You like going out to the small little quarter acre lots that are real competitive, lots of activity in the suburbs of Florida. I interviewed a guy the other day, Pete, he’s gone after only ten plus acres out in the sticks because his philosophy is you can do more with these types of properties that are ten acres. Somebody could buy them and subdivide them or build a big house or go hunting tournament, the trophy properties. You know, So it’s interesting, I think. What do you tell people, Ray, of like how do you need to like find your niche and stay in that lane? Or do you say like do as much is different many different things as you can?

Ray: Yeah, there are so many niches in land flipping itself already. So there are people I know they buy a huge lar like 300 acres and they subdivide them and sell them. Right. And there are so many niches that you just have to find one and to make it work. And then you can go to the rural land or whatever. And if you’re doing a role and just do that and then go to the infill us, do not try to do two things at the same time, because as you already find out, is very confusing. Sometimes it all and it’s very hard to offer on the infill as is is easier to offer, right. So just call a different game. But I don’t suggest people to do two things at the same time.

Joe: Yeah. Now for the other questions, Matt.

Matt: So you might have talked about this on the, on the other show that you did, but why do you prefer offer letters instead of neutral letters?

Ray: I said to everybody, our offer letter is like a little army, right? So it kills all the non moderate sellers and the guy who has arrived is a moderate seller, right? So they call you back and you save a lot of time. And the reason why I don’t like neutral letter is you have to take a lot of calls. Of course you can delegate that to someone else. But the thing is, if you do it only yourself and you have so many calls come in dilemma your ability to go to multiple markets at the same time. But what if, as whatever the offer letter, I can go to many companies the same time without worry about those people who call me back is not just curious how much I’m going to offer them.

Matt: And how many offers do you send per week?

Ray: Right now I send about 10 to 20000 offer every single month. Yeah. So I heard another guy on those podcasts that guys are sent out. 50,000. Right. I’m going to have to do more, though. More mailings.

Matt: Yeah. And how often do you repeat? So let’s say you emailed Charlotte County or Brevard County then. Do you just keep mailing them or do you like let them? A couple of months passed and then email them again. Or what’s your strategy with that?

Ray: Yeah. So if I may go to a county, I got some deals I would mail to that county only if about three months later. So I got a I lost a lot of money on one county because I mailed it too soon. So I went to a county in Texas is called Comal County. I mailed so that county I got off my first deal in that county. I bought it for 20 and I was going to sold it for a 60. So that’s a done deal, recalls it. And then I got my second deal under contract with the seller, and I was supposed to buy it for 28,000. And then the realtor all told me, You can easily sell this for a 6365, No problem. I was so happy and still under contract. I said to myself, I’m going to do that county, again right now. So with a higher price offer price and then I’m out to that county again, I forgot to take that guy’s name out and I’m out. So the same guy with a higher offer and he’s saying, hey, right. It’s you know, other people use offer me a higher that is. That means that the market is appreciating. So I’m not going to sell my land. Maybe I can get a better offer, that’s all. He cancel the contract. I am super upside. Right? And he sold that to somebody else for a 35 grand and that guy sold for a 63. So, you know, that’s not a good strategy if you’re married to a son. Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So you only email right now in my life three months apart.

Matt: But to that point, you know, frequency is very important because we talked about in lieu of competition, you know, why also that’s not a bad thing is because they might get a bunch of other offers and then they get your offer and then their mind they’re thinking, Oh, this is the company that sent me those other offers. I’m going to give them all this time. Right? So may not even be you that sent those, but you’re backing off of other people’s marketing efforts and you think about credit card companies like there’s a reason why they just keep them coming in your mailbox. Because honestly, it has to do with the point in your life that you’re in. You might be in a point where you’re doing really well, and then some people might be in a point where they actually, you know, that would be nice to have this card and something happened in their life. They’re like, I need to sell this land, though. And so that frequency is pretty important.

Ray: Yeah, I went to some county and my very first time I signed the mailers, the seller called me back. Hey, this rate never signed me to this. So this address again, you sent me so many. I was like, This is the first time I sent it to you. But that’s to your point, you know, that’s very important.

Joe: I, I had a seller one time who, for some reason I was talking to them. Matt and I normally don’t call sellers, but I did on this one. And this was Putnam County, I believe. I think. Anyway, he was a popular county. Lots of investors send mail there, but his daughter is getting married in about a couple three months. He just wanted the money to buy to help pay for the wedding. Yes. And if he would have gotten that letter three months ago, he probably wouldn’t have cared or thought about her throwing it away. But now weddings are expensive. His daughter’s probably getting to that point where she’s stressing out and freaking out and there’s a bunch of drama going on. Yeah, that’s just kind of what happens. And he’s like, I need some cash because this balloon, this this bill is getting bigger and bigger every month. So he got my letter at the right time and he’s like, Yeah. And I, I talked to him. I said, you know, how long ago did you buy it? You know, he’s five or six years ago. What did you pay for it? Six grand. I was offering him four grand. Two grand? Less than what he bought it for five years ago. And I said, Oh, I felt kind of bad. I said, You know what? You should just listed with an agent if you want to get more money. And he said, No, I need it now. My daughter’s getting married and we just never used that property anyway. So the I want to reiterate the point of how important it is to always be sending offers in, sending letters, for example.

Ray: And you never know why people sell their land. I recently got a lead in that’s ocean front for a $700 and that that owner bought the land 20 years ago for 155,000 and he wants it out of his hand because he wants so quick so he can claim tax deduction or something.

Joe: Wow, losses.

Ray: Tax losses, yeah.

Joe: Cool man. Do you have any other questions?

Matt: That’s pretty much all I got. Yeah, that’s been great. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer this, Ray.

Ray: Yeah, no problem Matt. Any time.

Joe: Ray, what kind of advice would you want to give to people as we wrap this up here who are wanting to get interested in land and they don’t know where to start, they’re confused. You know, they hear us talking. They’re like, Oh, well, should I go after quarter acre lots or five acre lots or, you know, suburbs or sticks? What would you say? No, I think, Ray, we lost you is frozen, you hear me, Matt?

Matt: He looks frozen to me as well.

Joe: Yeah, well, we’ll go ahead and wrap this up. Now. You can see Ray’s handle there is virtual flip land. I think if you go to Ray.

Matt: He’s back.

Joe: Ray you’re back.

Matt: Sorry about that. So as far as advise is, don’t be over. Analyze whatever you think you’re doing. Right. So I’ll just keep doing the things that the teachers or whoever teaches you to do and just do it and don’t second guess. I mean, there are so many things we can do wrong, but by doing the wrong thing, you can get the right thing done.

Joe: Well, yeah, I just had a coaching call an hour ago and that was my same advice to him. Stop over analyzing this.

Matt: So easy to do. I often do it. And I call Joe and he’s like, wasn’t It’s not that complicated. Yeah. Like you’re always the voice of reason to me when I’m overthinking it.

Joe: Well, it’s so easy because you’re. We get worried about making a mistake. Yeah, but I think we need to. Investors need to give them, especially new investors getting started and even experienced investors like we’ve done a lot of deals, but like, we need to give ourselves permission to make mistakes.

Ray: Yeah, absolutely. And to share a very quick story. So I mailed to the county to the mail house. Our list to the mail house recently to a county in Florida, and he messed up the list, he sent my list to Nevada. Right. And then guess how many deals I got. I got three deals in Nevada now instead of Florida. So you can you can absolutely do the wrong thing and get results.

Joe: So I love your story of sending Arizona intentionally and offers ten times higher. And just to get the phone to ring, get them on the phone and talk to them. That’s awesome. I love it. Ray, how can people reach you?

Ray: Always my Instagram is Virtual Flip Land. There you go.

Joe: I put it up here on the screen on IG Virtual Flip Land. You’re doing a real good job posting content in there, little lessons that you’re learning and things that you’re working on. And it’s fun to watch. You be so active on the channel makes me jealous, which makes me wish I was doing more posting content and things like you’re doing. Ray So good job keeping it up.

Ray: Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Thank you so much.

Joe: Virtual Flip Land. Thank you, Ray.

Ray: Thank you, Joe. Thank you, man. Anytime if you guys need any help contact me anytime.

Joe: All right for sure. Hey, guys. We’ll see you later. Take care, everybody. Have a good one. Thank you, Matt. See you guys. Thank you.