Unlocking Land Wealth: Systems, Flips, and Close Calls with The Land Lawyer

Brandon Parker00:00Welcome to the Legends of Land Show. Today we have the land lawyer himself here to talk about land with us. Welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us a little about how you got into land and what the land lawyer does?

The Land Lawyer00:15Yeah, thanks for having me today. It's awesome to be here. So I got into land, like my brother got into the business. He started in 2020. And we've both been investment minded for as long as I can remember. We were pretty fortunate. Our parents taught us about investing in stocks, instilled in us, hey, if you put this money aside over here, it will grow for you and it'll do good things. I'd been reading The Wall Street Journal and making stock picks.

The Land Lawyer00:47I've made some pretty good ones like buying Amazon in 2013, stuff like that. But my brother came to me one day and he was like, Hey, I heard about this thing on a podcast where you you buy land sight unseen. You can do it at any state and you just you can sell. You can potentially make 100% return. And I'm over here thinking like, you're making 12% a year, that's great. So he's telling me this. I'm like, man, that just sounds crazy. That sounds super risky. You're not even gonna go see it. Like, how do you know this land even is what you say it is?

The Land Lawyer01:20But I'd say he's probably the more, you know, he was willing to take that risk and just go. So he went out there and did it and I saw what he did and I was like, Holy crap, like, this is a real thing. I told him like, Hey, will you help me get into it? And he's like, Sure, let's prepare some mail together. So we started preparing a mail together and really targeting smaller properties out on the West Coast. We've done a ton of deals in Arizona, Oregon, other states out there.

The Land Lawyer01:51But that's how it got started in terms of just land flipping. We both always had an interest in land. We have a farm probably an hour and a half or so from where we live. We're familiar with land ownership, what it means to be a landowner, what it means to take care of land. We know firsthand what you can do on land and all the just amazing family members that you can create. So I think that in addition to being a great financial opportunity, we both just love the class.

The Land Lawyer02:21We just love land.

Brandon Parker02:24There's definitely some magic within land. That's something I say to people that are like, ask why I got into land. It's because I love it. Something about land I just love. I was in real estate. I flipped houses, but it was really just all about the land, owning a piece of earth that you can do whatever you want with. It's feels like the most tangible asset possible.

The Land Lawyer02:43It just is always going to be there. And I love that. I love that piece of it. Totally, man. And honestly, you don't have to have a ton of land for it to be free to create just amazing family memories. I'm a grand my grandparents on my mom's side. Grandfather had 40 acres. He had a small field where he'd farm corn or peanuts, had a big garden, had a super awesome set up in the back for deer hunting. He had a small pond and it was just an incredible set up on 40 acres.

The Land Lawyer03:18And it's just a place that you can create a massive that you can raise kids on 40 acres and give them an incredible childhood there. Or you can if deer hunting is your thing, maybe you can have that as an awesome source of recreation. And unlike a boat or a fast car, if you're if you want to get out of your recreational investment in land, you're probably going to do pretty good. You know, boat or a car, you're going to lose, you know, at least 20% when you drive it off a lot.

Brandon Parker03:49Yeah, that's definitely true. Yeah, it's funny because people come to my house from out of town and I literally take them and show them my compost garden, my compost pile in my garden. It's like the thing I'm most proud of. Like the soil that I've been building over the past five years is like my prized possession. So, yeah, I feel you on the just the the feeling around land. I think that a lot of people that I talk to in the business have that same type of draw. There's something interesting there. I think that like really be great in to be great in land.

The Land Lawyer04:19You have to this backing up, to be great in whatever you're doing. I think you have to really love it and love it beyond the financial success that it might bring you. So people that know and know, love and appreciate the outdoors, I think, are perfectly suited to to come into this, especially for the more rural stuff like like a lot of what we do.

Brandon Parker04:41Why don't you talk a little bit about that? Talk about maybe one of the deals that you did early on in your land journey where you had a close call or some sort of lesson you learned? We had this one was in South Georgia,

The Land Lawyer04:54had some wetlands on the property, but it also had probably about half of it was upland. We had a broker go check it out. Oh man, this land is beautiful. Yeah, everything should be good. This part looks really dry. So we ended up not getting a perk test and moved forward with the closing. Closing was about $18,000 Listed it. Ton of interest because in this area there was like nothing on the market. We listed it at $40,000, got a full price cash offer almost immediately.

The Land Lawyer05:27We go into due diligence and they're like, okay, we need to get a perk test. We're like, all right. Yeah, it should should be fine. We've had somebody go check it out. I granted the probate looked at it. Of course, wasn't a with the health department or a soil scientist. Health department guy goes out there and he's, yeah, this this isn't going to perk. And I'm like, what do you mean? Is it not even going to be available for an alternative septic system or anything? He's I can't make that call. You need to hire a soil scientist and get out here and he'll be able to tell you better than I can. And this soil scientist goes out.

The Land Lawyer05:58He does his thing and his report, he told us something I've never seen before or since. It was straight up. You cannot put any type of septic system here whatsoever. Not an alternative, not anything. I was like, what the heck's going on? There was an inclusive layer of clay there to where you just cannot put even like a cap and fill or in above above ground, whatever he's in my professional bin. You can't put anything here.

The Land Lawyer06:29So we got super lucky on that deal because the neighbor happened to also really want that property. It's probably eight acres. And it was great for him because he probably had about 10, gave him 18 acres there and expanded his home site. Great for him. We got out of that thing at '25. So after our closing costs and everything, we made a few thousand dollars, but was a close call. If that to be frank, if we didn't get lucky with that neighbor being there, we would have lost money on that deal for sure.

The Land Lawyer07:02Is eight acres.

Brandon Parker07:04You can put one you probably could have put a deer stand there, but that's a pretty low rent hunting track. Yeah, that is a close call. And that could have changed the whole trajectory of how far you continue to land or if you decided maybe this isn't such a great idea. So that's what's wild. What do you think? What do you think like a non negotiable for people who want to be successful in land is looking at the bigger picture? Look,

The Land Lawyer07:30there are certain levers that we pull in this business and you just got to pull the levers. That's it. You got to create a system. You got to pull the levers. So would you back up? You say, really, what are we in land? Everybody says we're in land. Like, yes, we focus on land, but what are we really? We're advertising agencies. So what does that mean? You have to go. You have to send the mail. You have to make the phone calls. You have to do whatever you can do to find those off market deals because that's where the money is.

The Land Lawyer08:01So you have to put in the time, money and effort into your outbound marketing. Number one, that is a non negotiable. If you're not doing that, nothing's just going to come in and land in your lap. And then another non negotiable is have to provide great service in a way we're in the service business. We make things easy for people who want to sell their land. You have to provide great service. You have to pick up the phone when they call and you have to be competent enough in the closing process to make sure that they are comfortable.

The Land Lawyer08:36That's the big thing is that they are comfortable because most of the time they don't know us from Adam. They've just... We're a voice on the phone telling them that money is gonna appear for them through this closing attorney or title agency. You got to have great communication and service with them. And then finally, you know, you have to you have to continually... You have to make sure your capital is in order before you do this because there's nothing worse than promising somebody that you're able to buy this property and then you're you get to the closing table and you're not able to.

Brandon Parker09:09Yeah. And so you mentioned the systematizing different parts of the business and and that it's land is almost like a widget and you have to build all the processes around that. Let's talk about each part of your process. What do you do on the front end to acquire property?

The Land Lawyer09:26So almost all of our deals come off of direct mail. We're starting to leverage brokers to find value add deals, but I'd still say historically and still to date almost everything comes off of our direct mail. We are not employed... We've never employed text messaging. We've never employed ringless voicemail. We are really just laser focused on direct mail. Like I said, we're an advertising agency and I've been reading these books on advertising, the founders of advertising recently and something that Claude Hopkins, which is one of the pioneers of American advertising, says, like, as business people, we want to change something because we feel it's boring.

The Land Lawyer10:16We're just used to doing it. But that's really not the right thing. Like when you find something that works, you triple down on it. Run that play till it doesn't work anymore. You're a football coach. You're the offensive coordinator for a football team. You have a play that works. Run it up the middle. I'm going call that play all day.

Brandon Parker10:37Yeah. Alex Wormozi talks about that also. He says to exhaust each of your channels before you go somewhere else, you're wasting resources. And so you just hammer on one thing until it becomes ineffective or until you reach its cap and then you open a second marketing channel. And I think that's a smart way to look at it. Talk a little bit about what numbers you do for mailers. Like how many mailers do you send out? How do you determine where you're going to mail? What type of return on your spend do you get?

The Land Lawyer11:06So we're probably sending somewhere between 8,010 mailers a month. Just working back into that number, that's probably $6,000 $7,000 in ad spend a month. To be honest, I don't have a great handle on what our exact return on ad spend is, but I know it's a lot. I know it's a really good number. That's one item that we're in the process of implementing our business is tracking all of our key metrics.

The Land Lawyer11:43My brother and I, to date, we've been... We know that it's working, but we also know that we need to know exactly how well it's working so that we can continue to scale and improve our business.

Brandon Parker11:58And what's it look once the leads come in? So you send out a mailer. Are you sending out seven to 10,000 mailers all at once? Are you dripping those out? And then when the leads start coming back in, what's your process look like following up with them and closing those deals?

The Land Lawyer12:13Yes. So those are dripped out over the month. And then basically, we have our phone lines. They'll call in. Still, we have a pretty... We've done a ton of deals, we are still the guys answering the phone. We're in the process of getting acquisitions manager in place, we're being really careful with that hiring. Basically, the inbound call comes in. We're talking with them, negotiating with them. We reach a price. We send them a DocuSign. Or if they want, we will send them a hard copy purchase agreement and then they'll get it back to us and we'll get it to our closing attorney and or title company depending on what state we're in and get the process rolling.

The Land Lawyer12:55Then we always make sure that we copy them on all of our communication with the title company and keep them updated in the process as it goes along. Because if you're selling your land and let's say you have a thirty day closing period and you don't hear something for three weeks, you're going to start to think about it. We try to handle that on the front end and just make the process easy for them.

Brandon Parker13:17Yeah, I think there's a psychological aspect to that. It's the same thing as running a business or an agency or something like that. But people make a buying decision and then they're that period directly after the buying decision or selling their property decision is fragile, mentally fragile. And there needs to be some sort of reinforcement like, did I make the right decision? And so you stepping in and being like, hey, these things are going smooth. This is where we're at in the process. Like, you're going to get your money. Just reaffirming that decision is a key part of, I think, the psychology of the sale.

Brandon Parker13:52That's what you're referring to. Talk about reselling the property and what that looks like. What's your strategy on dispositions?

The Land Lawyer14:03So we leverage brokers for nearly 100% of our dispositions. And in the areas where we work a lot, we have brokers that they really operate as our partners and an extension of our business because I guess there's one thing I left out from earlier. You know, we put all those properties in front of the same brokers that we are working with time and time again, and generally they cover fairly large geographic area. So we get their opinion on what they would list the property for.

The Land Lawyer14:35Then during the due diligence period, they actually get step foot on it. They have the marketing ready to go. As soon as we close on the property, they've typically already gone out there and taking pictures and all that stuff. So the day that we close, we're getting that thing listed and we just leverage them. The way I look at it, we're an acquisitions company. Like, where do we make money? Acquisitions. I hear about guys having sales teams and that's great and all, but at least for me I look at stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.

The Land Lawyer15:08It's like how can we best leverage our time? Let's go out and acquire more land. That's where we make money in the business acquisitions. So we're laser focused on that. And if you're wading through all the tire kickers or hiring somebody in the man managing them while they wade through tire kickers, I just think those time that time those resources could be better spent elsewhere.

Brandon Parker15:30And yeah, so being so focused on acquisitions, I think, is a good strategy. What's your how are you building rapport with your sellers? It sounds like that's probably a big part of it is getting them on the phone and talking with them. What's that scene look like for you?

The Land Lawyer15:46It's different for everybody. Basically, they typically they'll say something and I'll just they'll say something about themselves and I'll just ask an open ended question. Like I was on a call with a seller from Arizona yesterday and he mentioned that he was a stockbroker. I just asked him what he did and then we had a conversation about his opinion that the government should limit short options. We just. I have so many random conversations.

The Land Lawyer16:17I basically just try to let them talk and tell me more about themselves. I just, like you're doing with me, just ask follow-up questions. People love talking about themselves. So I try to employ that. We work in addition to ourselves on the West Coast, working a lot of different places in the Southeast. I grew up in a really small town in South Georgia. I love to hunt, fish, go on the boat, do stuff outdoors, go hiking. So I think on on... And also have a southern accent on that level.

The Land Lawyer16:50I think that there's almost like an instant connection with a lot of the people in the places we're marketing to. They hear me on the phone. You know, if anybody from any country out there, but if you have a Filipino VA, they're going to immediately be skeptical of that person more than they will hearing

Brandon Parker17:09some dude from South Georgia. Yeah, that's definitely true. What type of land are you targeting? Are you targeting anything specific or is it a price range, acreage range?

The Land Lawyer17:22Typically we don't like to target anything that has a sale price of below around $30,000 We're saying that's our median sale price on the back end. Oftentimes, well, I'll say that plus we really don't like to target stuff that's less than two or three acres. So in a lot of my mailers, I'll just remove a lot of the stuff that's three acres and below.

Brandon Parker17:49Yeah. I think that where I see a lot of successful people is in that exact spot that you're talking about is a minimum purchase or resale price of about $30. So you're getting 15,000 on the kind of a minimum target to shoot for. And then there seems to be a sweet spot up to about $150,000 of where you can flip at a pretty good profit and pretty readily. Have you found that or where do you see the cap of where those flips happen real very naturally or you get into value add stuff?

The Land Lawyer18:25So I think I think you're right around the $150,000 you can still you can it's rare, but you can still hit a double on 125,150 thousand dollars deal. I'll tell you, like our all of our 6 figure profit deals, they've had some sort of hair on them that we've we've had to solve. But, yeah, I still like the I really love these bigger deals, even if you're not buying them at the normal land flipping or 60% of value range.

The Land Lawyer18:57Let's say you're buying 100 acre property for $2,500 an acre and you reasonably believe that you can sell it for it. $25.3500 an acre before you pay your your brokers and all that stuff. Man, that's almost a 6 figure deal, right? Who's going to turn that down? You got to make sure that you have the financing in place to where you're not going to get crushed by some crazy hard money numbers.

The Land Lawyer19:28But I like that deal more than I like a taking a 25 k property and selling it for 70 because I'm still making double. And in times of recession and in times of recession is large acreage tracks like, man, they really don't go down in value that much. Like you really see your stuff more associated with housing, your smaller acreage tracts, that's what takes a huge hit. But the stuff in rural areas that's really large land acreage, I love those deals.

The Land Lawyer19:59And if you get bank financing on them at a good rate it doesn't have a bunch of origination. You can use that leverage to turn those into incredible deals. We've done deals where we bought a property for $600,000 that was two ninety six acres. That's right at 2 k an acre. We sold it at $28.50 an acre. And we had... What? We had... Let's see. We put $12,000 down. We only put $12,000 down in that deal because the bank allowed us to use our equity in the deal based on their appraised value rather than the purchase price.

The Land Lawyer20:37Yeah. Like our our spread was going from 600,000 to just over 800,000. But when it was all said and done, like it was a 6 figure deal that we turned 12,000 into 6 figures and you just have to offer more on those because you're typically dealing with the more sophisticated buyer and you could still get them in a deal, but you just have to make sure your spreads there. And my rule of thumb is that if we can buy something at $1,000 an acre less than what we're, you know, than what we think we can sell it for conservatively, then that's going be a good deal.

Brandon Parker21:13And you talked a little bit about financing there. You hinted at it. Can you talk a little bit about... More about the process with bank financing, who you're approaching, how you're thinking about, what terms you're looking for?

The Land Lawyer21:26Yeah, you just need to go to your local community banks and just develop a relationship there. That's the biggest thing. And their rates are going be market rates. They're institutional, so that's just going to be the cheapest money that you can get. But it's also gonna be a personal guarantee, and then you're gonna have your finances in order, and you need to be able to show the income that... You need to be able to show income that they can underwrite you on because those guys, they're just... They're focused on debt to income.

The Land Lawyer21:58Do you have the the income to service the debt that they're about to give you? And typically, they won't care at all if you're in and out of the property because those those banks, they make most of their money on writing mortgages, not holding mortgages. They'll go sell those in the aftermarket so they can write the write the note and get their origination and all that stuff. They're typically happy to, but you just have to develop a relationship with a banker that that you know and trust.

Brandon Parker22:28And are you do your brother have W-two income to show the bank or are they looking at your are they looking at your businesses and able to use that income?

The Land Lawyer22:40So when we first started, we had W-two income. We both went full time in the land business in 2022. So we no longer have that, but we have we have income from the business that we can show. For some deals, we have had some way larger deals. We had some other people basically sign on to our sign on to the loan as co guarantors. And you make a sweet deal for them too. But yeah, there's if you get creative, there's tons of ways to qualify for these these loans.

The Land Lawyer23:12There there really is.

Brandon Parker23:15And with the PG, are you able to put up your other vacant land as collateral or are they requiring your primary residence like your house or something like that? Like how much of a risk you take in when you're PG ing? You're not giving them a security deed on the house or anything like that. You're just

The Land Lawyer23:32pretty liable is all that it means. Like saying, if you then if you default and they foreclose on the property, there's a foreclosure sale. If at the foreclosure sale, they get less money than the money you owe to them, then you're personally liable for that money. If you feel really good about what you're gonna what you're gonna be able to sell it for, I really don't... There's always risk and you never know what can happen. So I don't wanna disillusion anybody and say, but, yeah, there's no risk.

The Land Lawyer24:03But, man, with what we're doing, think it's so much less risky than all these commercial plays because we're running the oldest play in the book. Buying low and we're selling, I wouldn't say high, but higher.

Brandon Parker24:17Yeah. Selling up closer to market at least. Talk about a little bit about your law degree and how that fits in with what you're doing, what unique angles that might give you.

The Land Lawyer24:29Yes, my law degree. So I went to the University of Georgia. I had a great experience there, great professors, just a fantastic education. Then I went to work at a really awesome law firm in Savannah, probably 30 attorneys law firm, and had great mentor, great boss there. And we tackled a lot of really tough issues and it was our job to go out and dig deep, figure out the hard stuff for our clients.

The Land Lawyer25:00That could be in bet the company litigation. That could be in a real estate contested quiet title action. I did all sorts of different stuff when I was there, and there was a lot of stuff where it's okay. I know nothing about, you know, even this whole industry that this, you know, where these players in this lawsuit, what what they're in, but I need to go learn that so that I can figure out what their problem is, what the answer to it is. So I think on a broad spectrum, it made me makes me not afraid to tackle tough issues.

The Land Lawyer25:39If there's an access problem, we need to go negotiate an easement. If there's so you name the issue, I can go do the research and find out and say, here's our options. Let's go figure it out. And I think you don't need a law degree to be super successful in land. You just don't. But I think it is a little bit of cheat code when it comes to figuring out the hard stuff. And then I'm just really familiar with the entitlement process and stuff like that too.

Brandon Parker26:11What's the maybe stickiest situation you've been able to get yourself out of because you had some unique angles as a lawyer or with your background or something where you had to dig in real deep like that, figure something out?

The Land Lawyer26:27We had so we had this this property. It was in I wouldn't call it sticky, but it was just it just kept on getting better and better because of the research that we did, and we just were able to figure everything out with it. So we bought it out of an estate. It was like 65 acres. When we first started looking at it, were like, man, this thing looks like it doesn't even have physical access and it might not have legal access.

The Land Lawyer27:00The original plats weren't really clear. So I was like, I'm just gonna go read every deed associated with this thing. And we figured out not only does this thing have legal access, it has legal access to a major river in Georgia, which you know, and it's about it. The only thing that separates it and the river is a 10 acre property. So it went from like this being just a property on a dirt road without power to now this is an excellent property with it's essentially a riverfront property that you can go and you can legitimately launch your boat into this river and go up and down.

The Land Lawyer27:38And then we had a... When we dug into the deed records, also found that we didn't just have a sliver of road frontage. We had a pretty fair amount of road frontage because there was an additional property that came with it. But the deed research that we did on the front end made us just realize like how good of a price that we were getting this property and what a home run that that it would be. And we bought that one for just over 170 and we sold it for 422,000.

Brandon Parker28:10Wow. Yeah, that's a great story. Love it. That's the devil's really in the details when you start getting digging into these deals like that.

The Land Lawyer28:18Yeah, we're working through one. We're working through one now. I can't say too much, but we're buying a 300 acre 300 plus acre property and we've already closed in escrow. So basically, the attorney is holding it while we figure out this this issue dealing with a railroad bed that crosses the property. And there's a neighboring landowner that way back in the 1800s they owned this railroad.

The Land Lawyer28:49And back in 2003 they put into the county records an affidavit of ownership asserting that they own the railroad bed that crosses their property and then onto ours. And it is a key part of the internal access and road system of the property. So basically, we can't close until we clear this cloud on the property. So now we're negotiating with this very large landowner to try to get them to release their claim on it.

The Land Lawyer29:24And it's likely a spurious claim, but we're just trying to resolve it amicably in an economical way. But I think my experience as an attorney looking at problems like this saying, yes, this may be our right, but let's be pragmatic about this and figure this out in an economic way. I think that helps there just with the attitude to take towards problems like that.

Brandon Parker29:51Yeah, absolutely. Is that something... Do you talk directly with the the other party there and just say, hey, let's make a deal? Or are you going back and forth through lawyers? Or how do you approach that in a way that you're... How do you try to massage that situation?

The Land Lawyer30:07So for this one, it's a family corporation that they have and then they've always had an attorney. So we are having our closing attorney, amazing real estate attorney. He's the guy that's handling the communication with their family attorney on this one. We have another deal going on where I'm directly negotiating an easement. It's a landlocked property. I'm directly negotiating an easement through a different large landowner.

The Land Lawyer30:40He has the plantation in a conservation easement, like one of the tax purposes conservation easement. So you can get all these tax savings on. So we are getting an easement through his land. For that, I'm directly talking to him. For the railroad deal, it's just a little bit different of a situation and they're requesting that we pay them something. So we're handling that through our attorney so that we don't get double crossed there.

Brandon Parker31:09Yeah. And so when you're negotiating these deals personally, like an easement, aside from, Hey, I'll just give you this much money, what other levers can you pull or which ways can you incentivize to be creative about working those types of deals?

The Land Lawyer31:26The big thing that I'd tell people is, Look, I don't want to change the character of your land. All I want to do is get to my property and I'm not going to cause a problem for you. I'm willing to put it in the easement language that I can use this existing road and that's it. I don't want to bulldoze anything. I don't wanna do anything there. I just wanna get to my property. That person, of course, they're a property owner because you wanna get over theirs.

The Land Lawyer31:57They typically get that. Like the landlock deal I was telling you about, like that guy, he's not even asking for anything. I just... We skip traced him. I called him up. He had some information about him on the Internet and just asked him about that sort of asked him about some of the things I'd read and we established a rapport. And then he probably asked me 20 times, 20 different ways that he's not going to be deeding me any piece of his land.

The Land Lawyer32:29And I assure him of that. No, we just need the easement for ingress, egress over it. And he's like, Okay, give me the language. I'll get it to my attorney, then we'll be good. So it's just it's just negotiating a land deal. You just have to establish that rapport and trust and to do what you're you say that you're going to do. How

Brandon Parker32:50often is it that you have someone who's just a real stickler as far as I'm not giving anyone access for anything? Are people on par generally pretty reasonable when it comes to that? Or do you find? Yeah. How often do you find someone who's real, real tough on that type of thing?

The Land Lawyer33:10To be honest, I've never I know that there's people are out there, but I've I have yet to run across them. And also just like dealing with anybody, like if you're just really nice and you're not entitled, you don't like, you just never need to be like, I'm entitled to this, then usually you'll be able to work something out. Most states have an access law to where if you are actually landlocked, you are able to sue for access if they deny you an easement.

The Land Lawyer33:42So I never like to bring that up, but that's always in the back of my mind. Like there's a legal path to me getting access to my property if I don't already have it. The bad thing about that, at least here in Georgia, is that yes, you were entitled to access your property, but you're not entitled to bring utilities down it. You're entitled to access it. If you really want to have a value add play, you know, you want to be able to have somebody to get utilities, etc.

The Land Lawyer34:13So the best way to figure that out is just to be friendly with the neighbor. And, you know, if you need to pay them something, then you pay them. And if they're nice enough to just give it to you, that's great too.

Brandon Parker34:26Yeah. Do you operate mainly in a specific area? Do you stick to specific counties or specific state so that you know the laws really well? Or do you venture out North Carolina, Florida, like around the states? Like how do you think about that? I know the law better

The Land Lawyer34:45in our home state in Georgia better than I do anywhere else. That said, we still we've done deals all over the Southeast from Alabama to Virginia. We've done deals in Montana, Washington State, Oregon, Arizona, California. We're not scared to go anywhere. We can still no matter where it is, we can identify problems. We can find the people to

Brandon Parker35:13help us work them out. How has that evolved over time? I'm sure you probably started out more wide and broad and started to narrow down on a strategy for picking counties specifically. How do you think about that?

The Land Lawyer35:28So when we first started out, basically I was scanning Zillow to see where there was a great deal of activity for properties trading between 20,000 and $50,000 Okay, there's a lot of activity here. Let's start here. One thing that I've learned is going on is that just because you don't see a lot of activity in an area doesn't mean that there's not huge demand for land in that area.

The Land Lawyer36:04Say So we go off the beaten path probably more than most people that we know. I know this sounds strange, but we've almost gotten to the point where we're targeting land where we would like to own land, just places that have a lot of upland and that don't have huge problems with wetlands. Yes, it's really subjective. I don't have a ton of objective criteria. Go back to the leverage point. You can do this anywhere.

The Land Lawyer36:35There's people that are going want to sell you their land in almost any county. If you hit the right price, you just send the mail. There'll be some sort of deal that comes out of it typically.

Brandon Parker36:45And when you go off the beaten path like that, have you run into any situations where you have problems with dispo and getting rid of the property since maybe you're taking a risk there as far as it's not as high of an activity place or what you're saying is that dispo hasn't been a problem. You just find a good deal and it's a beautiful piece of property. It's easy to sell almost anywhere.

The Land Lawyer37:07It's the latter. It's like even in a place that doesn't have a ton of sales in the past six months or a year, that doesn't necessarily matter. That place, they might not have had much listed. People might just hold on to their land more there than they do, say, in Arizona. And throughout the Southeast people, they think about land ownership differently than they do out in Arizona. But Arizona, they're like, okay, I'm going to buy this 40 acre property that looks like almost did all the other 40 acre properties out there and I'm going be able to pull my RV camper.

The Land Lawyer37:43But, you know, there's honestly limited uses what you can do for it here. But 40 acres in the Southeast is totally different. Like you can do so much with it and people hang on to it more and may even mean more to people here than it does. It does there.

Brandon Parker37:59Do you think there's a it sounds like there's a different mindset. And so do you think people are buying it for more long term hold for their family or for rural recreational or to build a dream house? What's the thought behind why people are treating land that way in the Southeast, you think?

The Land Lawyer38:18I think there's far more utility value and they're buying it for the that utility value, just meaning the primarily the recreation and the ability to build and create their home there. If you have a wooded 40 acres, can have just like my grandfather's land I was talking about. You can have a pond, a deer plot, multiple stands, You can have a huge garden and a lot of places out west. It's not... That's not necessarily the case.

The Land Lawyer38:49And I think that the more stuff that you can do with it, the more perceived utility, the more people are going to want to just hold on to it. And there's also just something about... I don't know what it is here. People just love having their own spot. They love having, this is my land. It's my domain. I can do whatever I want with it.

Brandon Parker39:15Yeah. When I think about some of the difference between, let's say Texas, which is really popular, people buying 40 acres out there all the time versus the Southeast. It almost feels like you can... Your 40 acres might feel like 200 acres if it... If you have mountains and rivers and trees and it's tucked away versus you could be in Texas with 40 acres and you might see your neighbor. And so I yeah, I feel like there's some sort of psychological difference there, at least for me, if I'm thinking about somewhere that I would want to be out hunting and fishing and maybe building a house like that thought is more appealing to me personally.

Brandon Parker39:50So what are some what's maybe the most off the beaten path property that you've ever come across or like the most the property that was most intriguing to you? Like, maybe I want to own that type of thing. What's that? What's

The Land Lawyer40:05What's that? Oh, we had a so last year we had a property come across our radar that like it's probably an hour and forty five minutes away from where we live. It's only twenty five minutes south of our farm where we have a cabin. Great hunting setup and all that stuff over there. This property had two deep wells. It had a lug has a luxury deer stand that has power to it.

The Land Lawyer40:40So you can bring up a fan or like when it's still hot in September, you can bring up a heater once it gets colder, insulated, has a an actual running a toilet with running water in like an outhouse, probably 50 feet from the deer stand, which is just hilarious to me. There's no door or anything. It's just like a toilet, like under a little shack, but it has legit running water. It has like two different fields. One of them has an awesome irrigation system that that the owner had set up.

The Land Lawyer41:11And then it's got an old house on it from probably like the 1920s that we need to board up. We're buying some farm. We were still in the process of talking with the old owner about buying some farm equipment and stuff that they've had on it. But we went out there and we were like, yeah, we don't want to sell this one. We're keeping this one because it's an amazing deer hunting setup. It's set up to make some sort of mini farm. My brother has a background in agriculture, so we're like, let's figure out some something that we can do or grow out here.

The Land Lawyer41:46So that's just a little dream mini project that we have going there. And then this year we're planning on plowing it, planting sunflowers and having a dove shoot out there. And because it's so close to us, like it's got some real utility and it's just a super cool, super cool little property. So we got that one. We're like, we're getting it at a great price. We put bank financing on it, and that's great. Make the payments like $10,000 a year and we got it at 95,000.

The Land Lawyer42:21We got it 95,000. It appraised at 165. So we're buying equity like this is going to be a great deal for us as a buy and hold like there's great growth going on in the area. So this is going to go up in value, but there's also great utility value for us right now. So let's just hang on to this thing and it's just another cool property that we can go to down there. Can go. It's legitimately possible for us to wake up at the cabin, ride down there and go deer hunting.

Brandon Parker42:53That's wonderful. That's, and there's whitetail out there. And are you allowed to I think that you can probably bait them in. You can have a field of oats or something like that to bring them in. Is that right? Yeah, you can have a deer plot. Yeah. So you can

The Land Lawyer43:07plant stone peas, all sorts of different. There's basically deer plot mixes. You go out there and plant. But yeah, it's got an awesome clearing right from the right from the deer stand. They the old owners, they probably hadn't maintained it for three or four years. So we're putting some money into cleaning up, cleaning it up. We had to do a little dirt work to get a new culvert in to connect the two pieces of the property. That was probably $7,000. But it's just it's a super, super cool place.

The Land Lawyer43:38So we were like, we're not letting this one go. Yeah,

Brandon Parker43:42that's great. I've I got my first bow hunting buck two years ago and I just fell in love with bow hunting. Yeah, I just like, so that's one of my, my, my hobbies. So I'm always interested to hear about the stuff in the South Of Whitetail. We've got Blacktail out here and they're just taller, or excuse me, smaller, a little bit more feral and tiny and running around the mountains. So I love the Whitetail. Just, yeah. Give me a call. Come out here to Savannah.

The Land Lawyer44:08Our spot's probably hour and twenty from the from the airport.

Brandon Parker44:13Love it. Love it. All right. See, that's why it's all about having a podcast. You get the all kinds of connections. It's awesome. That's great. Love I like how you think about land in the whole I I'm the whole land scene in the Southeast has really been growing on me over time because of a lot of the reasons you said. So what's a let's think about maybe what's a controversial opinion that you have in regards to land and land flipping? Doesn't And necessarily have to be like controversy, like people are going to get mad on the Internet, but maybe something that you have a contrarian take or something different you think about land that a lot of people don't.

Brandon Parker44:52Or in land flipping or value add or in here? I think it just

The Land Lawyer44:57goes back to something I said earlier about, man, like we're running advertising companies like this is an ad agency. We are a direct marketing advertising agency. Everybody's always talking about I did this deal, that deal, and there's some self promotion that myself included. But when you strip it down, we are advertising agencies, so we need to be we need to be operating as such.

The Land Lawyer45:27Like, I think not enough people put Enough time and effort into effective copy in what in what they're mailing out. We've put a lot of time and energy into creating great marketing to to go out to people. We're in the process of getting all of our numbers together, but I feel like we get probably a much higher than average return on our ad spend. And I think a lot of that does have to do with the way that we focused on our ad copy and getting people to call us back.

Brandon Parker46:07Do you have any tips that without giving away your exact copy, do you have any tips or anything interesting you do with your copy that people might be intrigued by?

The Land Lawyer46:19I'd say to make it as personable as possible. There's everybody sending out the same mailer saying quick offer for your land. I'm a trusted company that's done 600 deals, or I got one the other day that was like, I represent an investment firm. No. Yeah, you you like it's you're this one guy that's looking for land in this one place that has so much more appeal to most of these landowners than like I'm XYZ Land Corp LLC.

The Land Lawyer47:01Do you work for BlackRock is what some people may think about that? And I don't have any. I believe in what we're doing and we always do what we say we're going to do. And I have no problem putting my own name on the mailer that goes out.

Brandon Parker47:19Yeah, you referred to yourself as a service business among some other things. But when you think of yourself as a service business, how do you present that to sellers?

The Land Lawyer47:30Like what are you offering them? You are offering them cash for their land in X amount of days. A lot of these, a lot of people, they might not have sold land before. You're saying like, I'm going to guide you through the process. We put, we're offering to put earnest money down. Yeah. The services you're providing is convenience. So we just try to convey that in our copy of this is going to be really convenient for you. This is going to be really easy way to sell your property.

The Land Lawyer48:01And for many people, that's what they're looking for. So we just try to be very personable in our written copy and we convey that this is going to be an easy process for you and that we'll handle everything and we'll pay all the closing costs.

Brandon Parker48:18Yeah. I've had a few friends ask me like, why are people... Why do people sell you their land at a fraction of the price? And I think the easiest way for me to explain it to layman is the same reason that someone trades a car in. You know that you could go on Craigslist and you could wash the car and you could do all these things and sell it for more money. Or you can just take it to the dealer and they'll give you money for it. They'll hold your hand through it. It's just convenience.

The Land Lawyer48:45Yeah, a lot of it's apathy. Like they you have apathetic sellers and there's typically not a lot of distress. And that's one of the things I really love about the land space because in house wholesaling, I've never done house wholesaling, but, you know, I've read and read about a bunch of stuff to deal with it and watched a bunch of the videos, all that stuff. Like there's typically a lot more distress and people are in like really bad financial situations that you're having to help them get out of in some way with house wholesaling.

The Land Lawyer49:21And we really don't see that hard hardly ever. It really is. The motivation really is just more like, hey, I'm I'm apathetic. This offer showed up. It works for me. So tell me where you want to go from here. And yeah, it's just you hate you hate seeing when somebody's in a bad spot. So I'd rather just help somebody get where they want to go rather than maybe profit off their bad situation.

Brandon Parker49:54Yeah, I'd never put that together, but by definition, owning an extra piece of land is almost a sign that you have some sort of excess. So it's going to be less often that you're running into these distressed sellers more often that you're running into someone's, yeah, I used to hunt it. Don't do that anymore. Or my daughter's getting married in three months and just want to get rid of it. Don't care. And that is a real positive part of dealing in land. Do you think that people care who's buying the land?

Brandon Parker50:24You noticed that you mentioned that you put your own name behind it and that type of thing. Do you think that people are thinking about legacy when they sell land very often or is it more apathy or what do you run across in that? I think it's different for different people. Some people it's just all about the price.

The Land Lawyer50:45Other people, they do care that you're not representing China. I've had multiple people ask me, you're not buying land for China or the two to always get is China or the teachers union. Oh, really? I heard the teachers union. That's interesting. I had multiple people be like, you're not buying land for China or the teachers union, are you? No, sir. This is just me and my brother. And I think that some people do. And I think there's also something to be said for playing in your own backyard.

The Land Lawyer51:19I've had multiple deals where, you know, here in Georgia where they're like, yeah, I got this other offer from this guy in Texas or this other these other people from this other place, but I called you back because you're from here. I'm like, yeah, that's great. That's a little bit of an edge, you know, that you can get there. That person, to your question, like, I think they care who they're selling to. They want to sell to somebody more local than somebody in a far off state.

Brandon Parker51:54I can see a little bit of that feeling. Feeling like that it's staying almost within the family type of feel as opposed to just some investors buying it. They're going to flip it. It turns into a very transactional type thing. And we've talked a lot about the emotions surrounding land here. And so I can see that definitely playing into it a lot. What do you think you've mentioned that you think about it as a marketing or ad agency. Where would you point people to dive deeper into that concept?

Brandon Parker52:26What are some of your favorite books or podcasts or things surrounding advertising, marketing and building that type of brand around your land business?

The Land Lawyer52:35I'm going give you a list here.

Brandon Parker52:39I love it. I love a list.

The Land Lawyer52:43Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins. I just got two more books on on advertising that about... I'm about to dig into. One's the the king of Madison Avenue, which is about David Ogilvie. He he ran this ad agency called Ogilvie and Mathers. Warren Buffett always talks about David Ogilvie.

The Land Lawyer53:14David Ogilvie is a genius. There's a hilarious line in one of David Ogilvy's books where it's like, it... I'm the guy who... When I saw The New York Times had published, Is David Ogilvy a genius? I called my lawyer and told them to sue them for the question mark. There's another one that I'm about to dig into. It is the art of writing advertising. It's another thing with David Ogilvy in it. Then I've gotten some good stuff from another.

The Land Lawyer53:45It's almost like a textbook, but successful direct mail, successful direct marketing methods by Stone and Jacobs. So I'm like, I don't know. I'm doing a deep dive on advertising because look, human nature doesn't change. Like, there's so much that people in advertising have figured out beforehand. And, like, we're ignorant amateurs if we don't go try to learn that. There's no excuse.

The Land Lawyer54:15Like, there's no excuse for sending out bad copy. If we're serious about what we're doing, we need to send out the best stuff.

Brandon Parker54:23Yeah, a 100%. I might add the the ad, what's it called? The Adweek, the copywriting handbook. I think it's Sugarman. But anyway, I'm into that whole thought process as well. I love the idea of good copywriting. So it sounds like you're really into advertising, marketing, copywriting. Is that of one of your main passions around things you're studying? Are there other veins to your study surrounding land that you're interested in too?

Brandon Parker54:53I

The Land Lawyer54:56love reading biographies. I love that podcast Founders, just people in business, the history of entrepreneurship and what you can learn from people that have come before. It's broad reaching. I love history. I love reading about history. There's just so much that you can learn there. I love writing. My career as an attorney, was in a really writing heavy area of the law. I spent a great deal of time and energy improving my writing because I viewed my job there.

The Land Lawyer55:29And it was I was a professional writer. People don't think about attorneys like that very often when you boil it down. What if you're a litigator, what are you? You are a professional writer. 98% of the results you're going get for your client in a court is going to come from your written work in the research that you've done. So I really enjoyed that part of the job. And it's also one reason I got into Twitter was to have a writing outlet.

Brandon Parker56:00That's a heck of a concept there. I was thinking of all of this marketing and copy and things like that directly around land. But the idea that a lawyer is a professional writer is that's really a profound thought. That's great. So did you come to the love of writing and having concise thoughts through becoming a lawyer? Or did you start to discover that when you started to transition into land?

The Land Lawyer56:27Even in high school, loved one of my favorite classes in high school was my creative writing class. I I liked it then. In college, I majored in political science and almost got a double major in Spanish. Not quite, but I love language. I love writing. I just do. I always have. And I think that if you can communicate well and tell your story, it can just put you on such an awesome trajectory.

The Land Lawyer56:59There's really something to be said for being able to tell your story in a way that allows you to connect with just infinitely more people than you could if you were just going it by yourself and meeting people at conferences or whatever.

Brandon Parker57:12Yeah. You can see I've got each of these pictures up here has a mental model basically that I use behind there, but this is PT Barnum here. And he wrote There's a Customer Born Every Minute, or that was written maybe about his life. But from a marketing perspective, he's one of my favorite people to reference or think about, like, how might he approach this? Because he was always such a showman. He always had such an interesting angle. So what people in history do you look to or think about when you consider writing or maybe promoting yourself or looking at Twitter and how that's a vehicle for business?

Brandon Parker57:48And, yeah, what are some historical figures you think about there? So let me go back to your PT Barnum comment there. There's a

The Land Lawyer57:56a guy that you need to know about in a book that you need to read. Jesse Cole, who is the founder of the Savannah Bananas, and they're basically like the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball now. Like they started off as a college wood bat league, and now they're filling up professional baseball stadiums all around the country. They have their own form of baseball they play. This dude, he walks around the stadium in a yellow tuxedo. He takes pages right out of Walt Disney, PT Barnum's book when it comes to just a fan experience and the way that he uses his business to create his marketing.

The Land Lawyer58:37The book is called Find Your Yellow Tucks, and it's just about standing out just like Disney and, PT Barnum did. Going back to your question about there's some people in history that I think about, you know, telling your story. Yeah. I'm in no way saying I'm like the people that I'm about to reference, it's just an example. You have people like Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon, all of whom used the concept of telling their story to great effect, to help them achieve the ends that they wanted.

The Land Lawyer59:18Alexander, he named every city that he created Alexandria. There was a ridiculous number of Alexandrians, and he put statues of himself all over the place to make himself, you know, more like a god all over his empire. Caesar, when he's gaining notoriety as a general, he's writing his account of his conquest in Gaul, and that became a very popular book at that time and really increased his notoriety and his ability to attract military men to his army. Napoleon was obsessive about his propaganda and the way that he used that to fuel his military machine.

The Land Lawyer59:56And we're not generals in this business, but the concept still applies. Like if you tell your story, it can help you achieve your end no matter what it is, especially if you have an interesting story and you can communicate that effectively in a way that interests people.

Brandon Parker1:00:14Yeah. It's when you start talking about that, it's so easy to start drawing the parallels between Alexander having statues of himself and cities named after himself. He's essentially staying top of mind with people, which on a very small level in Twitter, it's like you're just posting daily and you're just pinging, pinging in people's brains. You're part of their, their mental construct that they have. Just the land lawyer. That's a guy I've heard of on Twitter. I see him post every once in a while, and it starts to become part of your consciousness. That's a really cool way to look at it. Yeah, as you grow your account, I look forward to seeing what the landlord becomes.

The Land Lawyer1:00:48Yeah. You stay top of mind there and then they have a tough deal they need to get through. Maybe I can help with that. Maybe they want to partner up or maybe they have some sort of issue that deals like, hey, I want to get this thing rezoned. It's way more valuable for you to go get it rezoned to industrial. Okay. I was the assistant city attorney for two towns for almost four years. I'm super familiar with that process. Let's talk about it and see what we can make happen.

The Land Lawyer1:01:19I think it's just it's another way to to drive deal flow and find new partners and just network with people. It's such a hack to be able to have access to some of the people that you have access on there.

Brandon Parker1:01:34With you putting yourself out there as the land lawyer, it does start to it resonates for people like, if I have this tough deal, I might I might ping the land lawyer and ask him, are you continuing a legal business? Is this part of your strategy is to have land and your legal business going? Or what's that part look like?

The Land Lawyer1:01:52No, I'm not offering legal services. I'm licensed to practice here in Georgia and I keep up my license. When I left the law firm, basically they we worked on an independent contractor relationship for me to like basically help smooth out the transition. They had something that they asked me to help with. If it's my old boss, I may do it out of just, you know, just respect for him. But I'm not actively maintaining a legal practice.

The Land Lawyer1:02:24A lot of times better focused building our land business. Not saying that there won't be some opportunity for legal work in the future, but as of right now, no.

Brandon Parker1:02:37Yeah. So this is a connection and helping people with business deals and making like bigger picture business connections. Are you thinking of further down the road? How are you picturing your land business as you maybe you expand on Twitter and you have a lot of connections? Are you looking to go in a different direction or grow into land further? Are you happy where you're at? What's the five year plan look like for you?

The Land Lawyer1:03:03Five year plan. So, the land flipping business and figuring out some of these title issues, minor subdivides, That is just... That's something that really can be systematized. So it's really profitable too. So our five year plan is let's create just a machine that can run through these, do these more clean deals this way.

The Land Lawyer1:03:38But where we wanna go is we wanna be entitling these larger larger tracts that we can potentially exit to say the national homebuilders, that sort of thing. So we want to get more into entitlements. We want to have a steady, just cash multiplier over, let's say, the left side where that is. We are doing our marketing. We are building inbound leads. We are flipping land and doing deals here.

The Land Lawyer1:04:09But then the more complicated stuff that is that's higher leveraging. We need to be going out and doing more of that stuff ourselves. And then hopefully the business will grow to a point where we can hire additional people to help on that entitlement and development side of the business as well. I think that's really where you can that's where you can make a 7 figure lick. That's where you can really go out and start to build really a lot of wealth in a few deals.

Brandon Parker1:04:40Where is the best place for people to find you online and follow your journey?

The Land Lawyer1:04:46On Twitter and my handle is LandLawyerBrian with an I. Alright.

Brandon Parker1:04:54If you could put, say you had a million followers on Twitter and you could put one message out there that everyone should know about land, what would that be?

The Land Lawyer1:05:07Man, it looks like work. Roll up your sleeves. Like, that's where the money is. Like, I think people pass over these hard deals all day, but that is where you'll make your money all day. I don't know that we've had a 6 figure profit deal that didn't have some sort of tough issue that we had to work through. And, don't pass those up. Just roll up your sleeves and get to work and figure it out.

Brandon Parker1:05:34Good call. Good call. That is a perfect spot to wrap up our awesome talk with the land lawyer here. I'd love to have you back on in few months from now and see where you're at. So any parting thoughts for the for the listeners? Think we covered a lot. I mean, thank you. Thank you for your time and, really enjoyed it. Yeah. That was a blast. We will... We'll have you back on and great to have you and give a follow at landlawyer on Twitter, my friends.