Best Land Flipping Hacks: The Land Geek

Brandon Parker00:00What... What's the most logical place to start? It depends on their budget.

Mark Podolsky00:05So I have clients that have a very low budget, and they wanna look at properties that are $500. I have other clients with millions of dollars, and they wanna do bigger deals. You know, maybe they wanna do it for a ranch. So... Or, you know, big parcel to subdivide. It just depends on on the budget. I'd say our our bread and butter deal is about

Brandon Parker00:27Hello, everyone. Let's dive into the land universe with Mark Podolsky. This is the original land geek. He started back in 2001 with only $3,000 and built his empire from there. Fast forward today, he's penned the book dirt rich, and he guides and mentors other land investors on how to build a lifestyle without the constant grind. He leads frontier properties, and they've done over 5,500 land deals. He's the host of the popular podcast, the best passive income model, and also the creator of geekpay.io.

Brandon Parker00:58Mark now spends a lot of his time mentoring and coaching newer land investors to help them along in the same journey that he's on and create financial freedom. So this will be an important podcast to listen to. Let's hop into the show with the legend himself, the land geek, Mark Podolsky.

Mark Podolsky01:13Mark, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Brandon, thank you so much for having me. My pulse is still normal. Respiration's fine. I can't complain.

Brandon Parker01:21Well, you you probably have a nice low respiration with the all the automation and systems you've built for your lifestyle. No,

Mark Podolsky01:29you know absolutely you know it's just the way to to grow any business, not just the land business.

Brandon Parker01:35Yeah. Absolutely. So what do you think the... What's your niche and what's the main thing that people can take away from how you operate in land?

Mark Podolsky01:42The way the way I think about land is it's like the ultimate subscription model in in a way. So I know I can just kind of walk you through the model, if you want. So Brandon, where do you live? Santa Cruz, California. Santa Cruz, California. Okay. Let's assume that you own five acres of raw land in Colorado, and you owe $200 in back taxes. So you're advertising two important things. Number one, you have no emotional attachment to that raw land.

Mark Podolsky02:13You're in California. The property is in Colorado. And number two, you're distressed financially in some weird way. Because we don't pay for things like our property taxes. We don't value them in the same way. As a result, the county treasurer keeps sending you notices saying, Brandon, if you don't pay your property taxes, you're gonna lose that property to a tax lien or tax deed investor. So all I'm gonna do is look at the comparable sales on your five acre part... On your five acre parcel for the last twelve to eighteen months. I'm gonna take the lowest comparable sale.

Mark Podolsky02:45Let's say it's $10,000 and divide by four. And that's gonna get me what Warren Buffett would call a 300% margin of safety. So I'm gonna send you an actual offer of $2,500. Now you accept it. Why? Because for you, $2,500 is better than nothing. In reality, three to 5% of people are gonna accept my, quote, unquote, top dollar offer. But now that you've accepted it, I have to go through due diligence or in-depth research. I I have to confirm you still own the property.

Mark Podolsky03:15I I have to confirm back taxes are only $200. I have to make sure there's been no breaks in the chain of title, no liens, or encumbrances. And all of this can be outsourced by a team. I... Like, I use a team in Jamaica. They're connected to an American title company. It costs about $11 to do, but you can certainly outsource your due diligence very inexpensively. And that's for deals $5,000 or less. $5,000 or more, don't take title risk, go through a traditional title company or gonna save a little money, maybe an abstracter.

Mark Podolsky03:46But let's say everything checks out. I'm gonna send you a check for $2,300, the treasurer for $200. I own it free and clear. And now, Brandon, I'm gonna flip this property thirty days or less. I'm gonna make it cash flow like a rental home. So I have a built in best buyer. Do you know who it is? No. The neighbors. The neighbors. Ah. So I'm gonna send out neighbor letters saying, hey. Here's your opportunity. Protect your privacy. Protect your views.

Mark Podolsky04:17Know your neighbor. So oftentimes, the neighbors will buy. Now if they pass, I'll go to my buyers list. The buyers list passes. I'll go to a website you may have heard of. It's called Craigslist, fifteenth most trafficked website in United States. I'll go to what I know you've heard of called Meta or Facebook, the buy sell groups in the marketplace, and then I'll go to the lands. So land.com, landandhub.com, landandfarm.com, landflip.com, landmotor.com, landsofamerica.com. These are platforms where people buy and sell raw land.

Mark Podolsky04:50But the way that I'm gonna do it is I'm gonna make it irresistible. So all I'm gonna ask for is a $2,500 down payment for someone to control that five acre parcel, and then I'll make it a car payment. Let's say $2.97 a month at 9% interest for the next eighty four months. So, I get this one time sale. I get my money out on the down. I could go six to ten months out and now I'm getting $2.97 a month and 9% interest in the next eighty four months Brandon, no renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents, and because I'm not dealing with a tenant, I'm exempt from Dodd Frank, RESPA, the SAFE Act, all this owner's real estate legislation.

Mark Podolsky05:29So it's a simple game. Can you create enough land notes where your passive income exceeds your fixed expenses? And then you're working because you want to, not because you have to.

Brandon Parker05:39That's beautiful. You mentioned something in there with, an abstractor. So you've got the title companies, and then you've got a team in Jamaica for the low. What what's an abstractor?

Mark Podolsky05:49So an abstractor is the person that actually does the work for the title company. You can just go directly to them and save money. They they actually go to money, pull the files.

Brandon Parker06:00And is there a... Do you have someone on your team specifically that will just be the abstracter for you that you pay kind of full time staff, or do you have someone you outsource that to, or how often do you use that? Outsource that because,

Mark Podolsky06:13you know, each county is gonna need a different abstractor.

Brandon Parker06:17Okay. I see. Typically. Yeah.

Mark Podolsky06:19And if you're you know, you're doing big deals, you could use National Title Company, but even then you would wanna keep everybody honest. Mhmm.

Brandon Parker06:27What's the what's the size deal that you recommend people start with? Say that they... Maybe they have j... Joint venture partners, and so they can kind of start in a certain niche just wherever is the most... What... What's the most logical place to start? Depends on their budget.

Mark Podolsky06:44So I have clients that have a very low budget, and they wanna look at properties that are $500. I have other clients with millions of dollars, and they wanna do bigger deals. You know, maybe they wanna do it for a ranch. So... Or, you know, big parcel to subdivide. It just depends on on the budget. I'd say our our bread and butter deal is about $3,500.

Brandon Parker07:05Okay. So 3,500, and then that... That's so that's probably a reasonable place for someone to start. And if they didn't have the $3,500, they could get a joint venture partner or someone to come in with the money. But that that $3,500 range, what do you like about that range?

Mark Podolsky07:20Well, there's a lot of property in that range, and I just think that, you know, when you flip it, it's a it's a very easy car payment, and you can get your money out very fast on those smaller deals. So those those are really nice singles. But I wouldn't get a JV partner. I would get a debt partner. So you shouldn't give up equity on these deals at all because it's, you know, it's it's laborious, and the money doesn't drive the deal. It's not like multifamily where if you can't raise $50,000,000, you don't have a deal.

Mark Podolsky07:55Right? In these, $3,500, it shouldn't be hard to find. If you're making a 300 to a thousand percent return on your money, it doesn't really matter what you borrow at.

Brandon Parker08:05And how do you, if you are putting things on payment plans, having things come in eighty four months down the road, how do you have the liquidity to to do the deals when you're first getting started? Do you recommend doing that?

Mark Podolsky08:18So you can sell your note to an investor, and so you can get two bites of the apple. So let... Let's say you've got a note worth $5,000. Right? And you put in, let's say, $2,200 into that property, and you're getting that over time. Well, you could sell, say, twelve months of that note to an investor. So now you're gonna get maybe your money out to go and do it again. That investor will get a good return on their money as long as that person keeps making their payments.

Mark Podolsky08:49If they default, that's not a problem because you'd have a deal with... You would just resell it and get that note to perform again, where you would just make sure that it performs. And then if the note would revert back to you. So you get two bites of the apple, essentially.

Brandon Parker09:05Interesting. Where do you find a... Tell me the specifics of where to find that that type of, who you sell the note to. Is that a company you go to or is this... Yeah. You can go to a website like tlfolio.com. Okay. Great. Tlfolio.com. I've never heard of that. That's that's interesting. Yeah. What's what's a software tool that you can't live without that you recommend to everyone, and maybe what's a tool that you're experimenting with right now? So there's two tools I can't live without.

Mark Podolsky09:34And if you go to landgeek.com/resources, you'll see the two tools I use. It's lgpass.com and geekpay.io. So LG pass automates the business from your county research, getting a list, uploading that list, and sending out mailers so it automates your mailers. And then you can put your due diligence into it. So it's like a CRM, then you can handle your marketing in there all the way to closing. What used to take twenty minutes of paperwork, you just press a button, and it's done as well.

Mark Podolsky10:07And then on the back end, for the note collection, the management, it's geekpay.io. It's a set it, forget it, payment system.

Brandon Parker10:17And the... Talk a little bit more about geekpay.io.

Mark Podolsky10:21So geekpay.io... So basically, let's say that you're you're my borrower. Right? I'm your lender. So basically, what I'll do is I'll set up that note in geekpay.io. So you'll make the payment to me. You'll make your down payment, and then your monthly payments, I need to track. But I don't wanna send you a notice every single month that you owe me this money. I certainly don't wanna figure out the interest either. So the geekpay.io does all the math of it.

Mark Podolsky10:52And so you'll give me your account number, your routing number. It'll automatically go into my account. What's kinda cool, though, is if your ACH fails on the checking account, it'll hit your credit card as a backup. So you're pretty assured of getting paid if you set it up. And the way it's done is you charge fees to your borrower. So geekpay.io is the only software I know of that actually makes you money.

Brandon Parker11:21Great. So it And it charges it charges fees to the borrower when they are... When they miss a payment or when they're late or when it bumps over to a credit card, or what do you mean by that? So there's a no collection fee because real estate always has fees. So you'll get a no collection fee. You'll also get a prorated fee for your real estate taxes,

Mark Podolsky11:38so you're not paying the property taxes. Your borrower is. And then if there is a... If they are late, then there would be a late fee as well.

Brandon Parker11:48Oh, wow. And so it it literally makes you money for the service pays itself. Yeah.

Mark Podolsky11:53And so even if you have to hit the credit card, it'll charge a 3% convenience fee if you want it to. Wow. That's fantastic.

Brandon Parker12:02If you could post one message on the Internet, on Twitter, and everyone on the Internet would see it about land investing, what would you say?

Mark Podolsky12:10I I would say it's the best passive income model. And if you know something better, I'd love to know what it is, actually.

Brandon Parker12:20I like that.

Mark Podolsky12:21Yeah. I I mean, I have... Actually had a podcast called the best passive income model. Now it's the art of passive income podcast. But, essentially, I I really just think that, when it comes to a lifestyle business, there isn't a better one out there.

Brandon Parker12:41And what do you think about the people talk about land investing like it's Blue Ocean, but it does seem like there's a lot of land investors out there. How much space is there in the market? Is it literally Blue Ocean? Do you see any changes between ten years ago and today with the amount of land flippers that are out there?

Mark Podolsky12:59Yeah. There's a lot more land flippers out there today. But when you look at the general market, it's still a very blue ocean because you, me, a million people could be in this niche. We'll all run out of money before we run out of deal flow. It's just... There's billions of acres available, and there's no big money in it. There's no private equity groups. There's no hedge funds. They have too much money. Know, You if you ever got a billion dollars, you wanna buy productive farmland like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or Jeff Bezos and make 8%, on that.

Mark Podolsky13:33So in in this niche, it's... There's more people doing it, but it's sort of like all ships rise with the tide. It sort of just validates to the sellers in that marketplace, oh, this is the the value of my property. If I'm the only one making offers, that's kind of a problem.

Brandon Parker13:52What do you think about your cold outreach? I know that you do mail. What do you think about mail versus cold calling versus texting?

Mark Podolsky14:03Well, again, we can always make more money. We can't get more time. So I just wanna look at the most efficient way to contact a seller, and that's gonna be through the mail. Okay. So it just comes down to Yeah. I mean, you can't text sellers legally. They have to opt in to do that as well. You could call. Again, it's it's a little bit of a gray area there.

Brandon Parker14:28Okay. Yeah. What do you think the most innovative technique that you use that sets you apart from a lot of the other big land flippers out there?

Mark Podolsky14:38I don't think I'm doing anything special or fancy or innovative. I just think I'm I'm an inch wide and a mile deep, and I've just been doing it since 2000, and I just continually keep improving and compounding what we do, and it's just consistency.

Brandon Parker14:57And you mentioned building systems, in the in the beginning, and I think that's kind of the beauty of this for me. It's like this very scalable building systems structured thing, which is is exciting for me. Can you go run through your your tech stack, kind of the the tools that you use and how they fit together briefly?

Mark Podolsky15:18Yeah. I mean, again, it's just lgpass.com, geekpay.io. I'd say as you start to grow and you have more, more sales, I would use a tool like follow-upboss.com. And certainly for automation, I would use Zapier every day just in your own tech stack.

Brandon Parker15:36And how many people do you have on a on a team? And what would a skeleton sized team look like if you were trying to kind of get up and running efficiently? And then what does a team look like once you get to your size or in between?

Mark Podolsky15:51So when you first start, you just start building your team slowly. You outsource what you hate doing the most. And for a lot of people, that's gonna be intake. That's gonna be talking to the sellers after they get an offer. And so it's it's, you know, it's gonna be someone, you know, who speaks good English and is working on US hours. And then you can certainly incentivize that person, you know, if they close a deal and they save you money in a negotiation, maybe they get an extra hour bonus.

Mark Podolsky16:23So you've got intake. You've got due diligence. You've got marketing. You've got sales, and then you have an acquisition manager that manages all those people. I would say that our average client is spending between software and virtual assistance 1,000 to 2,000 a month, of doing that.

Brandon Parker16:47And with intake, you are... So you'd be kind of doing the due diligence or or, excuse me, pricing the deal yourself, for that lead, and then you'd be given to that intake person. They'd be calling the, landowner saying this is... They'd be doing the sales. This is the offer that we have. This is our top dollar offer as you put it. So if I make you an offer and you respond to it,

Mark Podolsky17:10then that person would be intake. Because you might wanna just call and yell at me about the offer. Don't Yeah. So they're gonna do the intake to make sure that they understand the closing process. If there is gonna be a closing process, they're they're they're filtering and talking to those sellers.

Brandon Parker17:27And how long do you generally try to make your close, and what's the the contract and the close and the due diligence, timeline?

Mark Podolsky17:36Well, we would tell them it's gonna take us about seven days to do due diligence. It takes about a day. So we buy time that way.

Brandon Parker17:44K. So talk about some of the businesses and the things that you do adjacent to land, because I know you're not just a land investor, but you have coaching and software tools and things like that. What's, yeah, talk about some of that.

Mark Podolsky17:58So, you know, for me, I've been a land investor really full time since 2001, and I love land investing. But really, it helps sort of just my family. Right? Nobody who bought a piece of land from me ever said, Mark, you changed my life with this parcel of land. They like the land, but it's not life changing. But once I started teaching people how to really solve not just their money problems, but also their time problems and escape what I call solo economic dependency, which means if they're personally not working, they're not making any money.

Mark Podolsky18:31They're spending more time with their family, their friends. They're living their best life. They're they're moving up Maslow's hierarchy of needs into self actualization where they can really have the time and energy and resources to discover their greatest purpose in life. And so for me, that's been the most gratifying thing that I've done professionally is just helping as many people as I can become totally free and work when they want, where they want, and with whom they want.

Mark Podolsky19:02And so I provide then as many tools as I can to make it as easy for those people as well. Because let's face it, nothing's easy. Right? It's a simple model, but it ain't easy.

Brandon Parker19:15And so how do people work with you as far as that goes? Do you have a community? Do you do personal coaching?

Mark Podolsky19:22Is it... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We do all of it. I mean, you can just start at thelandgeek.com. You can get the book Dirt Rich as well, and start there. So there's there's so many avenues, to do it. But I would say starting at thelandgeek.com, is probably the best way.

Brandon Parker19:42And where are other places that people can find you online? Is that the number one place? Are YouTube and Twitter good spots?

Mark Podolsky19:49Yeah. I mean, my team manages that. I... Yeah. YouTube, there's lots of information there. I'd say the podcast is just a wealth of information as well. You know, I'm sure I post stuff on Twitter, but I don't I don't know. I'm sure it's there.

Brandon Parker20:07What's what's another kind of unusual habit or absurd thing that you love about land?

Mark Podolsky20:14Well, I love the fact that it's the only thing in life that lasts. So everything in our lives is gonna go away, except for this piece of raw land. And so I think it's just such a cool legacy, to leave people, is this raw land. And, you know, we all know, you know, there's rural land that we looked at when you were growing up. Like, who would ever buy that land? Right? And now you're like, twenty years later, holy cow. I wish I bought that twenty years ago. So, you know, it's...

Mark Podolsky20:45You know, the raw land's like wine. It just ages really well.

Brandon Parker20:51Yeah. Well, what really sticks out to me about your whole journey is how you, as you put it, moved up the hierarchy of needs, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and how you've gone from just wanting to make money now to more of a philosophical approach and trying to leave a legacy and help people. So that is a... That is, I think, one of the most fantastic testaments to to land. It's put you in a spot where you're where you're doing what you're doing. That's, that's great, Mark. So I really appreciate your time today. Thank you for coming on to the Legends of Land podcast and help people like me who are getting started.

Brandon Parker21:26And, yeah, do you have any final thoughts for the listeners or the people out there doing land?

Mark Podolsky21:31Yeah. I mean, I love this Zig Ziglar quote. If you'll do for the next three to five years what other people won't do, you'll be able to do that for the rest of your life what other people can't do. And notice he didn't say the next three to five months. It's next three to five years. So you really have to be committed to to building something.

Brandon Parker21:51Wonderful. On that note, thank you for coming on the show. The legend himself, the land geek, Mark Podolsky. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Brandon.