Clint Turner: Learn Land

Brandon Parker00:00This is Brandon Parker. Welcome to another episode of the legends of land show, where it's my job to deconstruct world class land investors, how they think about the business and approach strategy as a land investor. Clint Turner is Learn dot Land's founder and CEO, but he's a land investor first. His investment company now located in Plano, Texas is going to gross 8 figures in land sales this year. You can find Clint on Twitter at Clint t underscore land and online at learn.land. In this conversation, we cover how you should think about the downturn in the land market, how to manage your cash position, how to find more cash, how to dispose your land quicker in the current markets, and how to grow a multimillion dollar land business.

Brandon Parker00:41Without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Clint Turner. The legends of land show with Brandon Parker. Deconstruct the tactics of world class land investors and learn tools to build a 7 figure land business. The Legends of Land Show is starting now. Alright. Clint Turner, welcome to the show, my friend. How are you doing today? Doing good, Brandon. Thank you so much for having me.

Brandon Parker01:12Yeah. Pleasure to have you on the show. So I was... Been pondering this question lately, but just imagine you are a fairly seasoned land investor. You're at that point where you're doing one deal every month or every two months, and you're dealing with cash flow issues, just having trouble getting past that hump of managing cash flow, turning the marketing on and off, and scaling from there. How do you think about that?

Clint Turner01:36If you run a real estate investment business, it's it's always an issue of your cash is... I don't know where my cash is. I was actually talking with someone on my team twenty minutes before this, and I was like, we need better cash tracking systems for this or this. So, you know, I've been doing this for almost ten years now, and that issue manifests itself in in many different ways. But I think at the beginning, when you're bouncing between, I kinda call it the yo yo of, like, finding deals, looking for deals, and then actually doing the deals, taking them down, doing whatever, if any, business plan that goes along with the deal and then selling it.

Clint Turner02:14There's always lots. Land is a very lumpy business. I think it depends on a couple of things. One, where you're at, like, what your experience level is. So for somebody who's brand... Let me say, like, experience with real estate that is, if you have... I see a lot of people that have flipped houses or done multifamily or things of the affected in... To land, and that's... They're not somebody that I need to tell. Only do one or two deals at a time and really focus on your cash flow. That's something they understand. If you're newer to the business, I've always been a big proponent.

Clint Turner02:44And the more I've done deals, I've been a big proponent of staying super focused on the deals and the task at hand. Because it's really easy to, like, go on Twitter and go on Facebook and go on Instagram, and you see a million things going on. And I don't even think it's shiny object syndrome. I think it's just, oh, like, I probably should make my sales process better. I should make better marketing. There's always things that can be done in the business. And at the end of the day, like, land is a business that revolves around sales and marketing.

Clint Turner03:15And so when you take your eye off the ball on doing deals, often that is what I've seen puts people in cash flow situations. So let me give you an example. When I was doing this for a couple years, I started out completely direct mail marketing. Right? And at the time, there was, like, some new shiny objects come... Coming out. And I don't think these were, like, new, but to me, they were new, which was things like subdivides or things like text or bring this voice mail or all these other great ideas that are out there. And if I fast forward a year from when I was like, oh, texting, I can reach a lot of people for less money, and I look back at the results, almost every single time I added a new marketing channel, my net to Clint revenue went down.

Clint Turner03:59So when I look back, I'm like, man, I really wish I had stayed focused on what I was good at. One example, I think this is a really cool deal we did. When I started, I was very active in Southern Colorado. And I probably did 200 deals out there, 150, 200 deals, something like that. And, like, still to this day, I get paid from that portfolio of of notes that I built from that. And then the new thing on the block was just not doing deals, little dozen square deals like that. And I talked about it.

Clint Turner04:29Everyone's talked about it. I looked back, and I was like, I had such good systems. I had such good marketing. I had such good consistency in that market, and I saw other people just continue to replicate the results I had for the year and a half as I transitioned out of doing those deals. I would have made so much more money if I really, really focused. I had a... Back when I was doing a lot of coaching, I had a client. He always blew my mind. He was very consistent, and he worked in two counties. And he only added the second county after the first, I think, three or four years in the business.

Clint Turner05:03Wow. Consistently made 100,000 the first year, and made 200,000 the second year, and made 400,000 the... So I continued to double, just staying singly focused in one market. And so I see people get very spread out in how they approach the business. And, man, if anything, if you're just getting to the point of scaling, it's very important to identify what are you really good at and what is making you money right now. Right? Very simple question. What is making you money? And then become more efficient at that thing. So I don't know if that answers your question, but it's very easy to, like, bounce around.

Clint Turner05:35And I think at the end of the day, if you are somebody who's doing one deal a month... Two deals a month, one deal a quarter, two deals a quarter, whatever it is, where are they? What types of deals are they? What size are they? What's the strategy that you're focusing on? And how can you just double and triple down in the same bucket versus, like, you hear Clint and Brandon talk about some new strategy on this podcast, which you'll definitely hear about, and being like, oh, I need to go do that thing because it sounds like it makes more money. That's why I see a lot of people get lost, and that's how I focus on it.

Brandon Parker06:04It's a great take. I've heard poor Mosey talk about more, better, new, and it's what you're talking about. If something's working, you're making money on it, keep doing more of that and do more of that until it's completely exhausted. Then do it better and try doing more of it again. It's all that before switching. What do you think the place currently that you might focus on? Do you think that is market dependent, or do you think that is entrepreneur dependent? If you were gonna say, hey.

Brandon Parker06:35This is what I would do if I was in year two.

Clint Turner06:38Yeah. I think there's a few things that go into it. Like, everybody has different buckets of cash they work from. I think that's something that gets glossed over a ton. It's like, how much money are you working with? How readily accessible is the cash that you're working from? When I started, I was poor. Like, I had nothing. I was working with a little bit of extra income from my w two. I took a loan from my grandpa to take a course, took a loan from my dad to buy the first few properties I did.

Clint Turner07:09My access to capital was way different than where it is now. And I've talked to a lot of people that have had different paths, and they've come up and they're used to working from 1,000,000, 2,000,000, $5,000,000 plus buckets of capital, whether it's their own or relationships with investors. So I think that is often, in my opinion, the driving force. Because especially in the market right now and the land market and the land flipping market, one of the... And I think this is gonna be very prevalent for twelve to twenty four months.

Clint Turner07:40One of the most important things is gonna be how quickly can you act on deals. Because there's a lot of people out there looking for deals. And when the good deals come up, you need to be able to execute on them. And there is nothing. There is no substitute. There's no fancy talk track, sales script, whatever, that beats, like, can you get money in the person's hand faster? This has happened so many times to me. That's why I'm very aware of it, and it's a focus of my business is the efficiency of our capital. Because I've lost a lot of great deals because I knew they were good deals in theory.

Clint Turner08:14Like, I didn't have the 1,400,000 to buy the property and the 600,000 lined up to do the work I needed to it and all the time and energy to do the project plan. Right? I needed ninety days due diligence so that I could go do that. I need a 100... You know, you've heard that story before. And I've lost number, many, like, double digit deals, great deals to people who were just positioned to go faster. Mhmm. People who came in and either they had access to the capital, or they were more familiar with the exact market.

Clint Turner08:45Like, I can look at a market. I do a lot of business in Texas, and there are still markets in Texas where I can't just first glance type this great deal. That's within, like, two hours of Dallas or Austin. I can probably do that with a glance. But Texas is a big state. Right? A lot of other areas requires, like, how efficient can it be. So to answer your question of where should somebody focus, I really think it depends... Like, the first thing you think about is how efficient is your capital. Right? If your capital is not very efficient, it kinda goes back to, like, exactly what we were talking about.

Clint Turner09:16It makes business sense for you to go do deals that don't make you 10,000 and make you a 100,000. Right? That's what I'd like to tell somebody to do. That's what I'd to tell everybody to do. But can you really just jump to doing those kinds of deals immediately? Like, I'm working on a deal right now that I'm gonna have to buy outside of title, and it's gonna cost me, like, $600,000 in cash. So it's a great deal, though. I think we'll make a lot of money on it. Fingers crossed. The deal's not done. But I just use that as an example to say, I need to be confident that I can underwrite this title myself.

Clint Turner09:51Need to be confident that I understand the property and the exit plan on it, and I need to be confident that I can get the cash to the sellers in time. Because this opportunity, it's out there for anybody to find right now. I'm not gonna tell you where to look, but it's out there. Or I'm not gonna tell you exactly where to look. But it's out there. Anybody could grab it, and the first person to the doorstep with the check is gonna get that deal done. And so if you're really good and confident at closing deals that you buy for 10,000 and sell for 20,000, but you hear Clint, Brandon, and everybody on the Internet talking about deals you do that are 10 times that size, but you're not put, like, efficiently positioned to do those deals, I would say you continue to focus on doing the deals that that you're good at.

Clint Turner10:35Kinda like an eighty twenty, and I even like to say ninety ten. Like, 90% of your time needs to go into that more bucket. The more... You just said it, and I like the analogy. The more of what you're doing that's working versus... Like, the eighty twenty is actually kinda flipped. They're like, do 80% of the work, give you 20... 20% of the work gives you 80% of the results. Whatever. Hey. If you are flipping 10 or $20,000 lots and then you wanna start going flipping $250,000 lots, it's not like you just wake up and it just starts working. You need to put the pieces in place.

Clint Turner11:05And, really, you need to become confident in the deal, or you need to have partners that are confident in the deal. You need to have efficient access to the capital to do those deals. And so if you're somewhere... Someone in that position, and I could go back to myself in that position, I'd be like, dude, these deals are making you a lot of money right now, or they're making you good money if you, like, put the blinders on and define what a lot of money is. Why would you do anything different? You got the system set up. And that guy I told you about at the beginning, I talked to him six or eight months ago, still doing deals in those two counties.

Clint Turner11:35Still doing $5.05 to 800 k a year. And so there there is no reason to have to go do bigger, have to go do better. I think the market will push you there eventually whenever it's time. But if that's not the case, then I don't know why you would change what you're doing. Mhmm. And it's a very reasonable... Sorry. Last thing on that point. People think that if you're doing one or two deals a quarter or three deals a quarter, that it's like, okay. Well, I need to be doing six deals a quarter. So, like, next quarter, need to do six deals. It's not a linear progression like that. If you're doing two or three deals a quarter, pat yourself on the back and say, that's great.

Clint Turner12:08And then figure out how can we do four deals next quarter. Or did we do one deal the previous quarter and then three deals this quarter, and then we have zero deals in the pipeline next quarter? Maybe we just focus on how do we efficiently do three deals a quarter. A lot of people top tick the numbers and the stats they give out on the Internet. Of course. Yeah. And it's like, how efficiently are you doing that, and how often are you doing that? Because if I could do deals like I'm just... Like, I'll talk about some of the deals we're doing right now. If I could do those deals once a week, I'd be everything would be bigger. You know?

Clint Turner12:38Mhmm. But it's hard to, and it takes time. I just say stay efficient. Stay focused on the things that are working, and don't go run off and just start doing brand new things because I guess somebody on the Internet tells you too.

Brandon Parker12:50That's great advice. There's so much information out there about land and so much quality coaching and videos, and so that's a double edged sword. With that info, that information can also be dangerous because you can be popping around trying too much new stuff when... Man, if you just got the land geek book from the decade ago and just put your head down and didn't pay attention to anything else, maybe you'd be, you know, crushing it. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting take. So with the cash and the cash management, how do you think about JV deals fitting into that?

Brandon Parker13:23Because if you think about the complexity of a $10,000 profit deal versus maybe your... A $50,000 profit deal, it could be a similar complexity, could be in your wheelhouse. Your efficiency of cash could come from a JV deal. Do you think that's a good way to leverage money? Get other eye... Land investors eyes on it? Is that... Yeah. What's that intermediary look like for cash?

Clint Turner13:48So two things. One, I need to have as many clips out of me saying this as possible. So I'm gonna say it on this podcast. Okay? There has been so many people that are taking... Because it's a logical step to think, okay. Maybe I'll go to a bank or go to an institution. And if you're Clint Turner, like, seven or eight years ago and you went to the bank, they just laughed me out the front door. So for some people, not... Like, it's not even an option. But for a lot of people that listen to your show and that follow me, you could probably walk into a bank and assuming you got some equity in your house, you got some cash, you got some stocks, you got some retirement, like, you could tap into lines.

Clint Turner14:26Right? Pre 2020, there were some, and I say some as a percentage, right, 20 or 30% of deals you could do that were pretty minor land development, land flipping type deals, or you could go to an institution and you get non personally guaranteed debt. This was pre 2020, pre that little banking collapse that everyone's already forgotten about. Mhmm. That's pre that. Okay? You could go maybe one out of four times.

Clint Turner14:58If the deal was great, the bank would write it as an asset loan versus a personally guaranteed loan. Post 2020, banking reforms happened again. I think there were, like, 12 regional banks. I don't know what the count ended up at, but a lot of them more or less got consumed by the federal government because of their poor lending practices. A lot of regulation came down. What the banks were actually doing is they were tucking these things in farm and ranch loans, and there were some little loopholes that they could do to where they wouldn't be personally guaranteed. In the last two years, I have not seen a single land deal.

Clint Turner15:29It could be, like, a $2,000,000 deal I'm buying for a $100,000 that the bank is writing. Like, they're not writing against the asset. They're writing against you. Okay? And I've seen a lot of people take that strategy, and it's worked for them. Okay? It's been a great three or four years, and it's worked for them. I don't think that's gonna be the case going forward. Okay? I... And the more... If you listen to smart people, you listen to people who have been through the o eight recession, you listen to people who have been through .com, kinda two thousand era recession, you listen to people who have been through the recessions in the eighties, Every single one of them talks about how bad land got wiped out and how a lot of the people that went broke had personally guaranteed overleveraged loans against land because land values are one of the first things to kinda go to bottom when there's a major recession event.

Clint Turner16:25And so not saying there is gonna be, don't know when there will be. Data always says that there will be another one eventually. And so I think it's a really bad time, especially with the uncertainty and everything right now, to be levering up. Alright? So unless you got a big balance sheet and you're smart with, like, financial risk management, I would not be, like, taking personally guaranteed loans. That's the first thing. To lead me into the second point of, man, I love doing a good JV deal. Okay? JV deals are what got me into doing, like, all the different types of deals I do now.

Clint Turner17:00Because I started through that book you're talking about, flipping little squares in the middle of nowhere and seller financing them for 0% interest, which I did a calculation, by the way. If I just charged 9% interest... Or I... Actually, I think I did 7.9. Because I pretty sure could have gotten every loan that I ever sold as 7.9% interest. I lost about $1,200,000 in Oh, wow. In equity just on my Colorado portfolio, not including everything else I've done. So bad advice. Don't do that. But all that aside, I still did okay. Man, I would be...

Clint Turner17:31I love JV deals. I've given a lot of money away. I've calculated over time. I've probably given $5,000,000 away in JV deals over my career so far. Probably more, I think. But I've always very much been like, I want... If there's somebody that's doing this next thing, and, like, people talk about subdivides a lot right now. But if people are doing subdivides, people are doing minor development. People are doing major development. People are doing title deals. If people are doing whatever niche or facet of land or real estate that you don't know, I'm a huge fan of doing JV deals.

Clint Turner18:04Because if I go to a funding partner and I bring a great deal to the table and they bring all the money, okay, yeah, I'm giving away a lot more of the deal than I would with a traditional bank, but I I I go to bed sleeping well at night. If the deal falls apart, our agreement says investment contains risk. Right? And it's not that you're guaranteeing cleanse balance sheet against it. And so not only do you get to learn from operators who are familiar with writing bigger checks or doing different style of deals, whatever it is, you get the, I think, like, the personal financial safety that comes from it.

Clint Turner18:42And land is a game that there's a lot of influencers coming into it, a lot of people talking and selling courses and stuff these days that really, in my opinion, don't grasp the risk that is associated with it. It's been a great market since 2016 when I started. Okay? It is shifting the opposite direction. Alright? And everyone sees that thing... Some deals are harder to sell. Some markets aren't absorbing land as quickly. A lot more people are doing the business. And it's...

Clint Turner19:14Like, everything sets up to where there will be a correction. It is really hard for asset values to double over the course of a couple years and not course correct back down. And so I think that there is gonna be... I don't wanna call it, like, a recession or, like, black swan event, but there's just gonna be a correction. Right? And I and I think we're in the middle of it, frankly. So I think people are gonna get stuck in that. And so if you are in the position of your business where you're growing and you're trying to figure out what are those steps to do, I am a really big fan of working with JV partners on, call it, quote, unquote, fifty fifty basis if it's something you're not familiar with.

Clint Turner19:52The caveat I would say is if I'm bringing... If Brandon's bringing me 10 deals a month that are consistent, like, two baggers. We buy for 10. We sell for 20. And it's just consistent. Right? And I'm doing nothing but writing a check for the same asset class with the same risk. I think you should probably have a little bit of the pie shifted your way. I didn't when I was doing it, but I think I could've. I think I could've asked that, and I could've gotten it because of the consistency of deals and results I was bringing to my financial partners.

Clint Turner20:23So to answer your question, long story long, I think it is really advantageous to take the half a watermelon is better than a whole grape approach Mhmm. And to work with people. If you wanna go do a subdivide, bring a great opportunity to a good operator. Right? Get... Like, my first subdivide I did, my first deal I did that was over a million dollars, had a value add subdivide component to it. I think I took home 32% of the net on that deal. 32%. Okay.

Clint Turner20:54So, like, I gave up, like, almost 70% of that deal. Yeah. And it probably was a little... If you take up the amount of time and energy and worry and everything I put into that deal, like, it probably was a little bit less than that. But, anyhow, I took home a third of it, less than a third. And I was happy with that. It was still $300. It was a good deal. And I was like, woah. Like, this works? My confidence went from zero to a 100. Right? 110 because I hit this big check, made my financial partners a lot of money.

Clint Turner21:24They were like, how can we reinvest? We're ready to go. Right? And so that was a huge step for me where I grew my business, and I grew my net worth, and I grew my ability to do more deals, do bigger deals. And it was because I wasn't afraid to just say, whatever. Take as much of the deal as you need to get this done. I wanna learn, and I wanna see this deal go full cycle. Also wanted to see if, like, are we all just, like, full of it, and we don't know what we're talking about? Right? Because if these deals are real, like, I wanna do more of them. And so it's kinda like breaking in, and I think as people who are training themselves to go find great opportunities, that's the hardest thing to do in real estate.

Clint Turner22:01You should be... If you have big opportunities, you should bring them. Man, one thing I wish I could do, I can still think back to this. There was a 800 acre parcel in Costilla County, Colorado. Okay? It's just beautiful, like, nice rolling hills, road frontage on all four sides, and some internal road frontage. And I think I could have bought it back in the day. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I think it was, like, sub 200 an acre, $200 an acre. And I think now, like, if I would have cut it up just into simple subdivide into 40 or 80 acre tracts, I probably could have sold it a thousand bucks an acre.

Clint Turner22:35And that's probably very generous, like, on the low end. But I didn't know how to do it back then. I was like, oh, no. And I just put... Just moved that deal along in the CRM, closed it out, and continued on my day. If I had just brought it to somebody... I didn't do anything with it anyway. If I just brought it to somebody who's like, hey. This still can't cross my desk. Too big. I'm out. Here's the leads info. They're very motivated to sell at $200 an acre. And I've gone to do that to 10 people and... Or however many. I was like, if you get it done, just give me 10%. Right? Or give me a give me a fee or something on the back and have fun with it.

Clint Turner23:08Man, I probably would have made so much more money. I would have met a lot more people, and I would have started doing bigger deals a lot quicker. So I'm a big fan of the partnership side. People get stuck in the 10%, the 20%. Like, how much more... Like, how much equity do we give up? Land is a risky game. And asking... Especially in this market, asking somebody to give you a lot of money for a land deal, I think it carries a lot more risk than most people really understand. And so give the person what they're asking for, especially if it's a gateway to get you to, like, the next level of doing deals.

Clint Turner23:39Huge proponent of that.

Brandon Parker23:41That's great information. There is... There... It sounds like there's some fat tails in land as Nassim would... Taleb would put it, but where we underestimate the the risk that's associated because of this nice market that's been around for eight years or however long it's been. What do you think... So there's hedging your risk, just being aware of it, not personal guaranteeing, being reasonable with JV deals because take into account that risk. As the market has turned a little bit here, what do you think the opportunity looks like in land, or how's the opportunity shift?

Brandon Parker24:19Obviously, you can start possibly picking up better deals, but then it's harder to dispo them. How do you think about that? Like, where's the opportunity lie within that? How careful do you wanna be about sweeping the floor, picking up a bunch of deals because they're cheap, but then not taking into account that it's gonna be harder to resell? How do you factor that in your mind?

Clint Turner24:42So when I started in 2016, flipping unusable land in the middle of nowhere. Okay? Mhmm. And I say unusable. It's usable. It's just... It's more recreational than anything. Mhmm. And I think everybody thinks this when they start landing. Like, who in the world is buying this? And that's what I thought. And, really, until I had done a few deals, frankly, like, even a couple years then, I was still like, why are people buying this? Like, what... And I get it. It's it's lower cost. It's... You can't you can't afford stuff closer to the city, etcetera, etcetera.

Clint Turner25:14But there's a real... Especially if you're unfamiliar with the marketplace, like, who is buying this this land? And so back in 2016, 2017, and, again, all the way up really frankly through today, like, the market's been great. We spent a lot of money out there. If people wanted a... They wanted another car. They wanted to track the land. There was discretionary spending money available. And in my opinion, that's where a lot of recreational type properties fall into. They fall into, like, discretionary spending budget.

Clint Turner25:46Mhmm. K? Because you don't... You... You're not living on it. Most of the time, you're not living on it. And if you are, it's it's in a different bucket. It's not discretionary spending. It goes into a housing bucket, which is, like, hierarchy needs first one or second one or whatever it is. So, like, completely different bucket of capital. So I think about... As the market is shifting, I'm thinking about where do we do deals? How do we do deals? The number one word that comes to mind is liquidity pools. Like, where is the liquidity right now? Okay? And I think that depends a ton on the market you're working in.

Clint Turner26:20I think it depends a ton on the types of deals that you do, again, the types of capital you have access to. But what I'm thinking about right now is where's the liquidity at? Okay? And it's still a question I'm trying to answer right now for land. It's... There's... You know, again, there's different buckets of where does land fall into. Right? And stuff that is, like, housing related, that, like, roof over your head, to me, is working a lot better right now than recreational land because there's a true use component to it versus a theorized use component.

Clint Turner26:59Right? And as the market softens, the first thing that goes away is discretionary spending budgets. Right? Like, the... Call it a house, a car, a boat. My friend Justin Sliva calls them the bass boat properties. Can you afford the payment on a bass boat? Well, then you can afford the payment on the piece of land. Right? It's, like, in that same bucket of consumer spending. You can afford your 800 bass boat payment. You probably afford... You could afford the $800 land payment. When the market tightens and not as many people are buying the boat, buying the extra car, I e buying your properties from you that you're buying and flipping and selling, that bucket of money dries up a little bit.

Clint Turner27:39And so I think it's important to figure out in your market where are the liquidity pools. Where I'm seeing them right now, things that are more closely related to housing. Okay? So if you can think, like, entitlement land, if you can think about land that's closer or within city limits that is truly, like, the day you close on it has a clear path to being built into a house or a home or apartment or whatever. Right? There's... Because a lot of that comes from institutional capital.

Clint Turner28:11Right? When subdivisions get built, it's oftentimes financed to the bank, which is institutional capital because it's subsidized by the government for home loans. Right? When we just sold a lot in Houston, it was a teardown lot. We bought it for $40, sold it for 200 because somebody had a million dollar construction loan to tear the existing house down and build a million dollar home on it. That was a liquidity bucket. It was tied into that. Versus if I was going to sell the property two hours outside of Houston, I need somebody who's just looking for recreational property and isn't affected by, you know, inflation and tightening budgets and all that kind of stuff.

Clint Turner28:49So I think it's really important to figure out where is the liquidity in your market. Up until now, there's been an immense amount of liquidity in the market as a whole. So if you're going to sell something that has a recreational use case, it's kinda fallen into the fact that everybody's had money over the past seven years. And I say that as a holistic statement. Not everybody's been as blessed, but it's been easier to spend money. It's been easier to get access to money. And as we went through COVID and land values went way up, because sellers typically lag a few years behind in land because they're old and just take time for, like, them to catch up to the market.

Clint Turner29:26And budgets have tightened. I think, like, recreational stuff has been harder to move, and I think that's what a lot of people are seeing. And I've seen as well with a lot of our deals. So I think really thinking about where's the money. Right? Where's the liquidity in your market? And, like, where does land fit in there? So that's where I think about it right now. Very different, very market dependent on what you're working on. But wherever the money is, that's the markets that I wanna play in. Mhmm.

Brandon Parker29:56And if you're an investor who has a small portfolio of some of that rural recreational land, what's the... What are the tactics to get that sold getting out from under that? I mean, looking at owner financing, lowering the price. I mean, what do you... How do you think about people managing their dispo portfolio?

Clint Turner30:15I have had a lot of conversations about this lately with friends and colleagues and just... It seems like everyone's struggling with this. And we actually... I'm about to try to figure out what I need to do because we just did an audit on... Of our loan portfolio. And, man, I was looking at something, and I was like, we are... Like, my master spreadsheet, I'm like, we are missing some properties. Mhmm. Like, I just know there's properties I own that aren't on this spreadsheet. And we went and looked and found a few properties that that weren't on a spreadsheet. So I have 10 or 15 rural properties right now that I'm trying to get moved after not really doing a lot of rule...

Clint Turner30:48Super rural stuff, I will say. K. Two, three, four hours away from major or secondary metros. I think you gotta go back to the playbook that's always worked is owner financing. Right? And I think I'm more mature now in this business than I was when I started. And so as I look at it and I say on our financing, I'm not necessarily thinking I'm gonna keep all the payments and the loans. Like, maybe I need it or a listener needs access to the liquidity in that portfolio that might just be thinking about doing the loans correctly.

Clint Turner31:18There's plenty of discount cash flow buyers out there. If you... Like, there's Paperstack. There's a thousand different Facebook groups where there's a ton of note buyers that are in there. As long as you look at and you do your seller financing correctly... So to answer your question, I think it's seller financing and lowering prices to really bring in, like, the affordability aspect of the property. Because a lot of people still want to... Like, I've proven to myself plenty of people wanna buy rural land. It's just depending on can they afford it.

Clint Turner31:49And just because you overpaid for a property or just because you bought a property that you didn't expect you had to sell on terms, market does not care. Right? Market could care less about that. We just are where we are. And if your property is not selling, either not priced low enough cash or you don't have... There's not access to liquidity. Right? Seller financing is a liquidity pool. It's just you, but it is liquidity. Right? And so there's no liquidity there. And I think that the secret to getting stuff sold is what is what I did back in twenty sixteen, seventeen, eighteen is just beat the market on pricing and financing.

Clint Turner32:25That always gets things sold, frankly. And I think the tweak you can do is if you're in that... Because a lot of people are in the ballpark of, I bought a bunch of land, that I thought I was just gonna flip for these exorbitant prices that have now come down, and I can't sell or finance. I'm gonna be underwater. You need to really focus on seller financing it properly. Good interest rate, good borrower. Simple. K? Mhmm. Good interest rate, good borrower. And maybe one third one is, like, good loan to value.

Clint Turner32:56Right? So if the property is worth a 100 and you get 25 down or 20 down or whatever, You wanna be kind of, like, a note buyer. Because at the end of the day, if you need to sell these notes, you're gonna be talking to note buyers. Note buyers love to see sub 70% LTV. Right? So if there's a $100,000 of of property value and there's $75,000 of unpaid principal, there's only 25% equity in that portfolio. A lot of buyers wanna see 30% plus just because it, like, it hedges the downside risk.

Clint Turner33:29Right? If the market does adjust 30% down, that note buyer has a big cushion to land softly. Right? It's looked at it evenly. So that might mean that you take less money. That might mean... I... There's a lot of consequences that it could mean. Right? But at the end of the day, that's what no buyers are looking for. Good borrower, good loan to value ratio, and... I don't remember the third one I said. Something else. Right?

Clint Turner34:00But that's really what we think about. Good interest rate. Good loan to value. Good borrower. And maybe even the fourth one, decent asset. Right? Understand what the asset is. If it's a bad asset, just say it's bad... Say it's not a great asset and expect to sell it at a further discount. Like, when I go look at... I get people sending me notes all the time. If I'm looking at a lakefront buildable property that's got 50% unpaid principal. K? So I've got 50% equity in this deal, and I'm buying it at a cash flow discount of ten, fifteen, 20%.

Clint Turner34:34Call 15%. And then I go look at an 80 acre tract in Costilla County, Colorado where your market value versus my market value change. Like, I'm gonna be very conservative. You're gonna be optimistic about what the market value is. And so if I look at it and I'm like, dude, like, even with the down payment that you took, I think that the unpaid principal amount here is about what the market value is. Right? If the market corrects, borrower stops paying, I'm underwater on this deal. I would much rather just go pay more money for the lakefront lot, the loan on the lakefront deal, than deal with this one.

Clint Turner35:10And there's always a number. Right? If I can give you half of what you're asking for so I have that cushion, but it's probably not gonna be good for you. And so for people who are stuck with the inventory, I think it's just thinking strategically strategically about about how how do do you you lower prices in seller finance. And if it's more than one property... Because I I was talking to somebody about this yesterday. There's different note buyers. Okay? If you're familiar with, like, real estate debt and you're a personal investor who say sub $5,000,000 in net worth, man, I tell people, if I ever wanna just quit working for a year, I'm just gonna take my cash.

Clint Turner35:44I'm gonna go buy land notes because I can average about 18% yield on those. I'm just gonna hang out and just harvest my 18%. So there are people like me who buy notes just purely because it's a... It it... It's much higher than inflation. It's much higher than market, what I'm gonna get in the S and P or what I'm gonna get with Goldman or whatever. And I understand it very well. So I'm kind of like a personal buyer. Right? And then there's this big gap in the market, and then there's, like, institutional buyers. And so you need to realize who you're targeting.

Clint Turner36:16For everybody, one $8,000 loan probably isn't gonna get anybody out of bed. Right? A portfolio of $128,000 dollar loans that are a 100,000, that's gonna wake you up to take a look at it further. Right? But on the flip side, a large portfolio of $2,500,000, too big for me. Right? It's too big for me to go take down unless I go raise the money. And I don't really wanna do that to harvest two or three points in the middle.

Clint Turner36:50So then you're starting to talk to larger funds, more institutional sized buyers. And, frankly, they like to write $5,000,000 checks. So there's kinda this gap in the market too, and you gotta realize where you're playing. Right? So you wanna package your deals up into a size that makes sense for the person that's buying. Because, like, a lot of people who are new to it, they're just thinking about it as individual, like, as individual properties. Oh, I got these four land notes. But as the other side of the screen or the other side of the buy... The... This equation, the buyer of the debt, they're thinking about it in completely different terms.

Clint Turner37:23How much money am I laying out? What's my cash flow? What's my yield on my cash? And so I think thinking about your inventory and how you're gonna discount and sell it on potentially seller financing, you should also be thinking about who's gonna buy that portfolio on the other side. Right? I think a really good sweet spot for people is to create portfolios. If I were to go sell my note portfolio off right now, I'd break it up into 1 to 200,000 large chunks. And I'd put some good assets in there. I'd put some medium assets in there, and I'd put a couple bad ones in there or, quote, unquote, like, the lower, the least...

Clint Turner37:56The less desirable ones. And I break it and I break it up into chunks like that, and then I'd go sell the individual chunks on the market or to buyers that I know. So that's how I think about it and how stuck with inventory. I'd be cutting prices to beat the market, and I'd be seller financing smart.

Brandon Parker38:12And when you talk about good borrowers, how deep do you get into the financials of borrowers? What's a good borrower look like?

Clint Turner38:22Consistent income for three years, $6.50 plus credit score, no serious delinquencies on their credit report. Like, past delinquencies are generally okay if they're not within the last few years, but no current serious, like, active delinquencies. That's pretty much my check. You can... There's two ways to do this too. You can self originate, which means you're looking at all these docs yourself, or you can pay somebody, an RMLO, like a residential mortgage loan originator.

Clint Turner38:55They often will take on onesie twosies. There's, I think, Texas Pride Lending is one of them in Texas. I think I'm getting that. We could be getting that wrong, but that's who I go to. Whatever the name of it is, I send it to you after this for your show notes. But if it's a larger property, generally, I'm gonna rule that as, like, a $100,000 property plus, and I'm selling it on seller financing. I'm gonna have the loan originated. Okay? So I'm gonna do, like, a professional origination, and they're doing the same paperwork packet that a bank would get.

Clint Turner39:26Right? And they're gonna give you the same summary of the borrower as the bank would get. And I'm gonna... And, a, I'm gonna make the buyer pay for that. Right? I'm gonna say, yes. I'll extend these great financing terms to you, but you gotta pay this $950 origination fee so that Texas private lending can originate you. Hey. By the way, do you have these three things? Are you a six fifty credit score? Do you have consistent income? Do you have serious delinquencies? Because if you do, this probably isn't gonna work. Right? But if you don't, great. Pay the $9.50. I'll get the report back. We'll be good. If it's a smaller property, I like to just ask people...

Clint Turner40:00I I give them the option. I say you can go pay for this thousand dollar report, or you can go pull your free credit report from Equifax or freecreditreport.com, and you can send it to me. Right? And I can just make a determination through there as well as in... As as well as paycheck stubs or, like, income statements to show me, like, do you consistently receive income every month? So that's what I mean by looking for good borrowers.

Brandon Parker40:25And is that cutoff point a $100,000, is that a a fairly standard cutoff point for you, whether you're doing that yourself or having it originated, or how do you think about that number?

Clint Turner40:37If I know I'm selling the loan or I know I'm planning to sell it in the next year, I'm gonna originate that. And I'm probably gonna originate it even, like, below that number. If it's a really great deal that I'm doing and I know I'm sticking it to my portfolio that I'm not selling, because the cat... Because, like, sometimes you do a deal... For example, like, we bought a deal for $15,000, I think, three months ago, and we sold it on a note for $218,000. Right? So, like, I could go get the liquidity to that, but the returns are basically infinite with the down payment on it.

Clint Turner41:11And I... Let me let me take that back. I think that property cost me, like, 35,000 after we paid some judgments and liens and taxes off on it. But it's still a very good return. That's one where I can stick the... I can stick it in my portfolio. The return is near infinite. And so I might be a little bit less lenient. And in fact, I was less lenient on seller financing that one than I was on a, like, on a deal where... For example, when I do a subdivide and I model out... Okay. If I sell 20% on loans or 30% on notes or whatever, I need to understand, like, how much do I need to go take to the market to sell, to get the cash back into the project, to pay off the investors, pay our investment returns, and everybody makes some money.

Clint Turner41:54Right? Very different ways I think about those two deals. So it's not a hard cut off. And in a perfect world, I'd originate every single loan, but it's, like, more paperwork and more time and more steps and more emails and all the shit that you have to do. And I think it depends on really if you're gonna sell it or not. But it's never bad. It's really never a bad thing to have a loan professionally originated if you're not familiar with doing it yourself. But it's gonna be somewhat cumbersome if you're selling a $10,000 property and you need somebody to spend a thousand dollars on the loan origination because that's what it cost or, like, it's gonna cost somewhere in there.

Clint Turner42:27It can become price prohibitive at some point. 1% of the purchase price at a 100 k generally makes sense. 10% or five percent of the purchase price, I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe I'll just have them... I'll tell them they can do it, or they can just send me their credit report. Right?

Brandon Parker42:42Yeah. That makes sense. So you're thinking about what the final... What you're gonna do with that property. So you have to sell some of the notes. You gotta... Or you're just gonna hold it? And you referenced that one that you had a 30... Bought for $35 sold for over 200 on a note. That's something that you didn't originate, you're saying, just because there was so much equity. It's whatever. Even if this person gives it back to me, I'm... I'll just do this again. So that was a thought. Equity. Yeah. There's a lot of equity. I did not plan on selling the note.

Clint Turner43:10And what was the third thing? Oh, sorry. Is... I got such a large down payment. Like, sometimes in my mind, if somebody's bringing a substantial down payment, like $30,000, I'm a little less inclined. Right? If I tell them the terms, they're good beneficial terms to me, and they're bringing a big down payment, I'm sometimes less inclined to make them jump to the hoops to originate. Right? Because it adds time. It adds, like, a week or two to the sales process. Mhmm. And, you know, people's desires to buy change pretty rapidly at times.

Clint Turner43:47So when the situation's there and the opportunity's there, and that that deal had a couple little thorns in it that, like, that property could have been... It's probably worth more than $2.18, what I sold them for. But they're gonna deal with some of the problems that were on the property. I felt comfortable talking to the buyer. They brought enough cash to the table to where I just didn't feel the need to originate that one. Big down payments help, I would say as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Parker44:09What do you think of the... You mentioned this earlier in the podcast that there's more people doing the business now. How has that affected or changed the dynamics of how the... How people should be looking at land?

Clint Turner44:26I think the biggest way from a land business owner standpoint... That's why that's the perspective I talk from, is a land business owner. Okay? I don't think it really changes anything if you're just a onesie, twosie investor, and you don't run a land business. There's a huge difference between somebody who does three deals a year and somebody who runs a land business, has payroll, has staff, has resources that are consistently day in and day in day in and day out going to the business. So I think the perspective changes based on where you're at.

Clint Turner44:59Now if you're in the land business Brandon, will you ask me that question again? Yeah. So there's more people in the land business. There's Yeah. I got information. Yeah. Sorry. I I was ranting, and then I was like, what? What did he ask me? And if you're in the land business, I think the number one thing, by and large, I've seen that's changed is that you need what we're doing right now. You need a network presence. Because think back to when you started the business, and those bigger deals came across your desk.

Clint Turner45:32Right? Or when you had done those two deals the quarter, and you're out of money. There's a lot more people talking to sellers, and you run a cold calling deal gig, right, where you talk to a lot of freaking land sellers. Okay? Their sentiment changes with the wind. Their desire to buy... To sell changes with the wind. And sometimes, man, I have gotten... I've been so blessed. I've gotten so lucky on some deals, and I've tried to science it out and figure out exactly what I did.

Clint Turner46:04And sometimes, I cannot come back to anything better than right place, right time. They liked how my voice sounded. Mhmm. I... Like, I don't know. It's just what it is sometimes. And there's a lot of people out there talking to land sellers right now. 80% of them can't close or do the deals. Right? So I don't really view more people coming in as bad. I think if you're unwilling to adapt, it probably is bad for you. Right? But, man, I'm doing a lot of deals lately with people who are newer in the business.

Clint Turner46:35Right? Mhmm. They're bringing... And I'll say a lot relatively because the type of deals I do are a little different now. But there was a period there where I was doing almost... Like, in twenty twenty one, twenty two, I was doing almost every single deal. It showed up in my inbox through a DM, through an email, through a phone call, through text message. Wow. Because there were so many people out there that are doing the hardcore prospecting work. They're paying for the cold calling service. They're spending the money on the direct mail. They're doing the riskier text and voice mail type stuff.

Clint Turner47:05Right? That's hard. That's a lot of work. And it creates more voices in the seller's head, and it really just makes it a little harder to get lucky. That's how I think about it. And so with more competition, more people talking to sellers, I think you need to open your doors and be ready and able to work with more people. And I... It's gonna be counterintuitive, and it's not, like, the easiest thing to just do day one. But it's also a pretty freaking easy thing to do to just network. And so I think that's a huge thing. With more people in the market, I think you need to be...

Clint Turner47:38You need to have a bit of a presence. And, dude, it can be micro micro. Like, I know some guys... Like, I was talking to a guy the other day. He said my marketing spend is gold watches. And he... They're nice watches, and he sends them to colleagues and friends and people that he knows. And I had this gold watch up on my door one day. He's like, what's going on here? And I look at it. I see what it's from. I'm like, that was a really thoughtful gift. Right? Now I talk to that person a lot. They've done a lot of business with me. Right? And he sends meat packages out, and he sends knife sets out, and he sends baby gifts when your baby's...

Clint Turner48:13He's focused on networking. His marketing spend is the gifts that go out. It's the thought that goes out into maintaining the relationships. He does zero marketing. His deals come from that. You have a presence here. I've been on the Internet for a while talking about this stuff. So stuff comes to me. So when it's like we're talking competition, it's been great for me, frankly. I've just had more deals coming to me. That's something you can't ignore, something you need to do. Now let's talk more practical things. I think you need to make sure that your marketing spend is within check. Right?

Clint Turner48:44Marketing costs have gotten out of control. It's really easy for your results to go down and your marketing spend to double and triple. And all of a sudden, like, where did my money go? I think you need to be really tight on your budget and your financials. And I've been preaching this for a couple years now. If you don't have the money to mail, then pick up your damn phone. Mhmm. It is almost free to go find land records and to call them yourself. Mhmm. Most people just won't do it because they don't wanna do it. But there is no cost there. I'm really focused these days on marketing channels that require less money.

Clint Turner49:18Okay? They require... So I don't have to spend $20.30, $40 a month on mail for doors... For deals to come in. When that strategy worked, it worked amazing, and I would love to spend that $40 a month. But now it's a little more challenging. You almost gotta get lucky. And when you do get lucky, it's great. But you gotta get lucky on that spend, I think. There's less just of a business mechanic there. And so I think you really gotta tighten in and dial in your marketing to be within what your true budget is. Right? What you truly have available to spend and burn, because marketing spend is not guaranteed.

Clint Turner49:51Everybody says land has a x y z ROAS. There is no guaranteed ROAS in land. Depends It on if you catch the seller on the right day and the mail's sitting at the top of the pile or whatever it is. So I think being real cognizant on how much you're spending on marketing and how you're finding deals and how you're pricing deals is the last thing I would say. Man, looking at comps from the last two years, like, we don't do it. I don't do it on my team. Like, if it was... If it has a twenty twenty one or a twenty twenty two on it, it's like a...

Clint Turner50:22It's a... It's an outlier set of data to me. I look at 2019 and 2020, and I look at what's pending under contract right now. Right? And then the third thing I'd say I look... That I think is really important to look at right now is what's active. Right? There's a lot more. I did a presentation November of last year, so I don't know how much it's changed since then. But I think the outcome of that presentation that I showed is that there are 500% more land listings online available for buyers right now than there were for the couple years prior to that.

Clint Turner50:58I think the areas I looked at, it was like, hey. In this market, there was a 180 listings between 50 and a thousand acres. And then you fast forward to right now, there's 1,100 listings on the market. Right? It's like the supply, the available amount of stuff for sale has gone to the roof. And so you just need to be very micro focused on your markets. Right? If you're going to list in a market like I just described, where there's significantly more activity than there used to be, where prices have really shot up, you need to understand what is going...

Clint Turner51:32Pending right now. Right? What is going under contract right now? Where are people spending money at what price points? And how can I come in and look at all the active listings on the market? How can I come in and undercut them? Because if you think about Zillow and you think about Redfin and realtor and land.com, the stuff that pops up on the map, which is how most people search, by scrolling through the damn map. Okay? The stuff that pops up with the little stars next to it and, like, really displays itself so you click it is the stuff that seems, to their algorithm, competitively priced Mhmm.

Clint Turner52:08So that you'll spend more time on the app, and you'll potentially book a showing, and they get paid from it. Right? Or they sell their marketing service or whatever it is. So you need to be very competitively priced so that the algorithms pick you up and actually show your property. Right? If everything's listed at 12,000 an acre and you list at $12.05 an acre and your property doesn't have beautiful waterfalls and rolling hills and trails and barns and shit, like, it's not gonna get seen. It needs to be listed below what the most recent similar track that is under contract is for it.

Clint Turner52:39That's gonna make it show up in the Zillow algorithm. That's gonna make it come up on land.com. You're gonna get more traction. You're gonna bet... And you're gonna bring buyers in a lot faster.

Brandon Parker52:48Do you have a system or a rule of thumb you use around that, like a price 10% below the the current lowest price? Or do you have anything systems around that or just kinda coming in somewhere below that's competitive?

Clint Turner53:03To me, it really depends on the feature of the property. Mhmm. The feature set of the property, especially if we're talking recreational. Okay? Development type land is a little different bucket. Right? But if we're talking recreational land, a flat field versus something that's nicely covered. It's got good trees. It's got mature trees on it. You can envision hunting on it. You can envision camping. Like, those are different properties. Right? Mhmm. And people want the latter. They want the thing that is more feature ask.

Clint Turner53:35Okay? Not many people want the 10 acre rectangle that has all pasture. So I think it depends a bit on the feature. You If have a property that really shines from a feature standpoint, then I'm a little less I'm a little less inclined to do heavy discounts. Right? But the truth is 90% of the deals that you do aren't that. Right? And so I just wanna be, like... If I can see everything's listed at 10,000 an acre, and I can see there's two or three properties under contract at 9,200 an acre right now or whatever it is, I wanna be at 8,900 an acre.

Clint Turner54:10I wanna be at 9,000 an acre. Right? I want... I think... And this is just one man's opinion. But I think if you're not listing your property with the intent to get offers in the first week, then you're not buying it right, and you're not doing the business correctly. Mhmm. Right? Unless your strategy is different, unless you're holding for a long period of time. But most people we talk to, most people that are in this business are in the business to quickly buy and sell the property that they're acquiring. Right? And so that's how I think of everything is I wanted to go to market in a fashion where there's gonna be a bidding war.

Clint Turner54:47And worst case, we just get an offer or two. But sometimes an offer or two is, like, a huge win in some really competitive markets right now. So I... So if I go to market with a property and we're not getting an offer in the first two weeks, we did something wrong. We need to relook at price, how we're selling the property, maybe just come to terms with, man, the amount of people that buy shit... Sorry. Not people that buy land, and they sit on it for six months because they're not getting the price they want drives me absolutely crazy. I cut ship on my properties, like, more times than I care to mention.

Clint Turner55:19I sell things for marginal gain, marginal loss. I think about it a lot more like just trading widgets. Mhmm. Like, I'm speculating that the widget's worth this much. And if I take it to market and I'm confident I'm marketed across all the platforms and it's being seen and I'm not getting somebody to buy it, then I'm wrong. Simple as that. Right? I am incorrect. Slight adjustments for it's hot as hell outside or it's Christmas time or it's whatever. Right? But outside of that, like, if I bring it to market and I'm not getting offers quickly, then I just did...

Clint Turner55:50My thesis on the deal was wrong. So I need to come down on my price, or I need to do whatever. I need to move towards a no lower price sale to get the thing moved. And that happens. That's a very common thing to happen. I think the important thing is to get out of it so that you can bring the cash back into rotation, and you can do more deals with it.

Brandon Parker56:08Yeah. There's a bit of a sunk cost fallacy there that keeps people like, oh, I need to get this back out of it. And it... There's some psychology from the trading that plays into it a little bit also. It's you wanna win that trade. You wanna make sure you win every time. But part of trading a widget is that sometimes you'll be wrong and accepting that, learning a lesson, getting out of it without hopefully a big loss, cap your downside, don't hold on to it for a year, get on with it. You're gonna lose sometimes or not do as well as you thought.

Brandon Parker56:39And there's a lot of psychology, I think, around that if people, like, kinda dig into it. But I think that your approach is right on. It's going to the market with the expectation. Hey. We need an offer on this within two weeks or we did something wrong is a great mindset, especially as the market softens. I'm guessing that's even more important. I round up the show. A final question that I like to ask people is, if you could put one message onto Twitter and everyone on Twitter would see it, what would you write?

Brandon Parker57:10And it's gotta land in the no threads.

Clint Turner57:14What would I put on Twitter? Everybody everybody could read it. You know what I would put? Because it would create a lot of controversy. So I would just put land cash flows, period.

Brandon Parker57:24I like that. Land cash flows. I like it. Now give me a short explainer on that because it's quality. Yeah. I mean, most people aren't familiar with our niche.

Clint Turner57:36And the reason I would put that is because a lot of people would say, no. It doesn't because it doesn't have this or that or it doesn't have a lease or something. And it's... Man, I don't think people understand how, like, m and a works. Like, you buy businesses at discount to future cash flow. So if I buy a property at a discount to its future value, it does cash flow. Right? I could buy, I could buy a 2008 Ford Mustang at a discount to its future value, and it's cash flowing. Right? That's the definition of cash flow.

Clint Turner58:08Land does cash flow. Lot of people would say it doesn't. Therefore, it'd go viral, and everybody would argue about it. And then I'd be able to talk a little more freely about why I am... Like, in my stage of my career, I bring a lot... I say a lot relatively. I try and do a lot of stuff with my own money currently, but I've also been blessed to have done some great deals over this... Like, over the last eight or nine years I've been doing this, build a good following, and have a hungry appetite for people to want to invest with me.

Clint Turner58:40Right? And so educating people on what we do and how I can consistently hit our current fund offers, like, 15.4%. Like, people look at it. Like, I've had a ton of meetings about our fund. And everyone loves the return metrics, and they love the mechanism, and they love the idea of land. But the problem is a lot of people don't get it. Mhmm. And so I would use that as a tool to teach people and gain followers and explain why land has cash flow. And it's a really great, in my opinion, way to diversify a portfolio that's heavy in tech stocks, heavy in commercial real estate, heavy in whatever debt product that you're into, S and P type market hedge.

Clint Turner59:23Right? I think it... I don't think I have eight years of data that I consistently outperform the market, and I think that there's a lot that could be done with a really big bucket of capital. Because like I told you at the beginning of this podcast, I think the people that are gonna do very well over the next few years are the ones that can move quick. I heard... Who was it? I think it was... What's his name? Shoot. Chris Powers? I heard him talking, I think, last year in his year end review that he does about why they were moving to more of a hedge fund model.

Clint Turner59:57And he said because there's a lot of great assets out there that they wanna buy, that syndicating deal by deal, they were having challenge getting across the finish line. Because when you're competing with mega institutional buyers, they can... If they see an asset they like, they can underwrite it, and they already have the cash. It's up to them to decide if they wanna spend it. Versus if I go find a great land deal where I'm buying it for, you know, I'm buying it for 1,000,000, and I'm putting 500,000 into it, and I'm selling it for 3,000,000.

Clint Turner1:00:28I've typically... In the past, I have to go syndicate that. Right? I need to structure the deal with the seller so that I have enough time to go raise the capital. And, frankly, half the time, by the time my due diligence period's over, I've spent most of the time raising the capital versus doing the due diligence for the property. And so I think people who can move quickly in this market are gonna be at an advantage. And so that's why that's why we're moving to a model where we... I like to use my own money because I think land is like this cheat code where you can multiply your net worth.

Clint Turner1:01:02Like, I'm 30. Okay? I never thought in my whole life I was gonna... And I'm not, like, mega rich, but I never thought I was gonna have money, right Mhmm. To the level I have now. And looking back at it, man, like, it's all been because of land. Mhmm. It's been because I've taken the cash I've earned, and I've redeployed it into land, and it's multiplied itself. And so I am still a big proponent of using as much of my cash as I can. But sometimes there's deals that are too big for me, or I'd be over allocated into land where it makes sense to have a bucket of cash.

Clint Turner1:01:36And so I think people are gonna do very well if they can find those deals and move quickly on them. And so I've been a little more focused this year on getting more efficient with our capital to where we can deliver great returns to our investors as well as have the cash liquid and ready to go to be deployed as we determine versus having to call 10 investors every time I see a deal, present the deal, they take it to their committees. We have a 100 meetings about it. And the whole time, I really should be spending the time, like, doing land related due diligence instead I'm on the phone trying to sell the deal.

Clint Turner1:02:10It's my thought.

Brandon Parker1:02:12So ways to move... I mean, the the main lever to pull, it sounds like, with being able to move fast is having cash ready. So the quickest way to ask cash ready is it's your own cash. I would say probably the second quickest way might be a JV deal with someone. Is there a way to get cash ready in advance that's not... No personal guarantees because, I mean, you could pull a home equity line out or something. But is there a way to get ready cash ready to move quickly in advance?

Clint Turner1:02:43There is. I think we glossed over the two things that I think most people are... It's most important of is your own money or JV money. Right? Because I use this... I was talking to somebody the other day who was asking me about a JV deal and growing their business, and I was like, you need to have your cash bucket. Right? This bucket of... If it's a 250,000, if it's a 100,000, if it's a 500,000, if it's a million, it's 5,000,000, whatever it is. Right? You know, if you were cash bucket so that when you see that deal that's buy for 100, sell for 300, you need to take your cash and put it in that deal as fast as possible, because that is a net worth multiplier.

Clint Turner1:03:21And if you do that over and over for five or ten years, you're gonna be in a position that you just never really thought you'd be in. And that's my pitch. That's why I've continually been putting my money back out into great deals. The second are JV deals. So if it's too big or all your cash is allocated, you've got a partner that says, hey. If you find a deal that hits these great metrics, I'm your guy. Right? And that's a relationship. That's something you work, but you have your bucket that you maximize. Right? Like, again, like, just because you have a $100,000 doesn't mean you should put every cent of that into land.

Clint Turner1:03:54Right? You need to decide how you wanna allocate. But I over... I mean, I'm out of money all the time from my personal bucket. So I either gotta dip into JV partnerships or into the fund. And so I think there's two buckets there. Right? You focus on your own and continuing to deploy the capital you have available as well as having a mechanism or two or three set up to where you can get access to the cash quickly. I think a great JV partnership where you have clearly defined deal terms, they're vetted exactly... Yeah. Exactly is a tough one.

Clint Turner1:04:25But you know how much cash they have available to deploy, and you have agreed. Here's how much we're gonna try and deploy together this year. Right? Just because somebody says they're a big real estate developer and they have $20,000,000, learn from experience, does not mean they're ready to give you that much money or even anywhere close to it. Right? So you need to understand, okay. You wanna deploy a million dollars this year at these return targets we've got. Great. So now I know that's my million dollar bucket. And if I bring them deals and they don't deploy money into it quickly, then I'm not gonna probably work with them in the future.

Clint Turner1:04:57So those are two huge things I think we wanna understand. To answer your question, how do you do it without those two? I think it's really hard to if you haven't mastered those two first. I could be wrong on that or at least gotten good at them. Because the third is you need a you need a structure. You need, like, a fund, for lack of better words. Right? You need something that allows you to pull the capital in and use it effectively. Right? Mhmm. So last year, I think last... I don't know. Q three of last year, we set up a...

Clint Turner1:05:29I always mess up, and I shouldn't, but I always mess up on what the letter is. It's the it's the nonregulated funds. We're not advertising. Like, I'm not Grant Cardone on Instagram. Hey. Wire me your $40.01 k money. Right? That's not what we do. It's a... There's a vetting period. It's kind of like a friends, family acquaintances type fund where the general guidance is somebody for thirty to sixty days before they invest with you, and they're an accredited investor. We have that fund set up where we can consistently take money over...

Clint Turner1:05:59You set the time period, but ours is a seven year period. So we can continue taking money for three and a half years into that seven years. And so I can go out, and I can talk to people who approach me first, more or less, about that vehicle. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're interested in that, you'd send me a DM, and we'd have a coffee. And then we'd have a second coffee, and then eventually, maybe we can talk about it. But instead of... And the reason we did that is because it's significantly cheaper to set up. It's a regulated structure, so there's not, like, funny business going on.

Clint Turner1:06:32Clear reporting, like, everything you'd get from a publicly regulated fund. And it's just a version of... I think it's the $50.06 something, c d something to that effect. And we can continually take cash there. We actually have more demand than I wanna take into it right now, but we do have that bucket set up. And I think when it comes to learning how that works is to always be in the position I just told you, I just said, is we already have more... Like, we have people who wanna give us money more than we wanna take.

Clint Turner1:07:04Right? Mhmm. I think it's really tough if you are trying to skip from, I did a few deals with my own cash, so now I'm starting a fund. Right? There's a lot of, like, track record and relationship building and things that need to go on in there versus I have a fund. I have the amount allocated into what I want right now, and I have people that ask me if they can put money into it. Right? It's a good position to be in. And it's only because I've been doing this for a while. I've got a bit of a name built up, and I've done a lot of deals.

Clint Turner1:07:35And so I have the track record. And frankly, like, I just truly believe that our deals are so good that I wanna deploy as much of my own money into them as I can. And that's a conviction I have that generally resonates with other investors where they're like, wait. I wanna put money in there too. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, yeah, there's structures you can set up. There's different ways you can pull it. You could pull it into a fund. You could pull it into just like a purpose built entity. There's different legal structures. But in the day, it doesn't matter if nobody wants to give you the money.

Clint Turner1:08:06So

Brandon Parker1:08:07hopefully, that answers your question. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, for most people, it's gonna be really leveraging their own cash position and then having JV partners set up with predetermined loose... Predetermined terms where you can go get that money quickly.

Clint Turner1:08:24Yeah. And I often tell people the date before they get married to somebody in that aspect. Like, pay due. Like, I wouldn't... Like, if somebody came in my inbox and was like, hey, Clint. Like, I have a great flow of deals. Do you wanna do a million dollars of deals with me? I'd be like, I'm probably not gonna respond to that message. Yeah. Yeah. But I think being a little more organic about it and as things come into your inbox and you have, man, I'd like to do deals with that person. Right, of going to them, just starting off with, like, single deal.

Clint Turner1:08:56Like, I talked to somebody the other day. They're like, man, this guy, he's got... He he said he wants to put $5,000,000 in my business, and I'm trying to decide how to take it. And I'm like, I know you wanna take it, but you haven't done $5,000,000 of deals in a year, one. And two, man, there's a lot of paperwork and a lot of lawyers and a lot of stuff that get involved when you start throwing money around like that. The investor, generally, I... This isn't a all encompassing statement, but the investor generally likes it when it's like, hey. Why don't we just do a couple deals together? We'll both go on title.

Clint Turner1:09:27We'll both be in it with our individual entities. We'll have a clear profit sharing agreement. And if we like how things go, then we can do something a little more formal. Right? And they're normally like like... Or at least how I've seen it. They're like, oh, good. One less entity to manage. Right? Less tax things I have to deal with my CPA. Very simple documents. I don't have to pay my lawyer or anything, or I don't pay him a ton. So it's easier to get in the door and get things going. And then if a few deals go well, it's like, hey. Let's let's put something a little more formal around this. Like, you've made $300,000 with me over the last six months.

Clint Turner1:10:01Do you wanna deploy a million dollars with me over the next year? Because that's what I need to keep growing my business. Mhmm. It's always easier to have that conversation after somebody's... Has proceeds in their account. And it's slow and it takes time, but I think that's the path that you gotta take.

Brandon Parker1:10:16Wonderful. Anything we glossed over or you'd like to dig a little bit deeper into or things we might've skipped in the podcast that you wanna get back on?

Clint Turner1:10:28Man, there's no need to there's no need to try and and we didn't gloss over it too much, but I just wanna hit it because it's the big word out there right now. It's like subdividing land. Okay? If you have a great operation that's making money flipping land, subdividing land is not, like, the game for you. Okay? There are some very simple subdivides that I would caveat with that where they're almost flips. They're, like, administrative flips, basically.

Clint Turner1:10:58Right? They're flips with a little more paperwork. But once you get into true development, you're just... It's a different business. Okay? It is not the same business. It's like you have an acquisitions arm, and then you have a development arm. And the development arm has different roles and responsibilities, has different objectives, has different tactics, has different KPIs. And most people are just like, oh, I've been doing land for a year. Now I'm a land developer. Mhmm. Now you're not. Mhmm. Land development is very challenging.

Clint Turner1:11:29It's very, very time consuming, and there's a lot of cash that goes in. Like, you and me are very used to putting $1,025.50, $100,000 as equity into a deal because we know it's worth a multiple of that. But what if you need to put 10 or 25 or 50 or $200,000 into not equity in a property. You need to put it into, like, architects and geotechs and architects and all the techs and all the studies and all the everything. And you're like, It's been six months, and I spent a $180,000 on this, and I still don't have my approval.

Clint Turner1:12:03It's like just a whole different bucket, whole different world. So as somebody who did this, who had a big win in 2020 from a subdivide, it was, again, right place, time, owner, put this property under contract for 1,200,000, had no clue where I was getting the money. That's the deal where I gave 70% of it away, basically. Sold that property for almost an exact double two bagger. Sold for 2.4. Did well on the property. Right? And I was like, I'm a land developer now.

Clint Turner1:12:36Mhmm. And what actually happened was I caught a really nice upswing in the market where my plan was to develop the property, but the market was so stinking good that somebody bought the property before any development or any entitlements had started. And I was like, I'm a genius. I'm gonna do this over and over. And it's really just that we caught the upswing Mhmm. Looking back on it. Now true subdivides and development plays, they're a lot harder. You don't just package them up generally and sell them, and you don't just flip things to homebuilders.

Clint Turner1:13:07You hear this from people a lot now. Oh, I'm working on this residential entitlement play, and Doctor Horton's gonna buy it from me. Bet you 9.5 out of 10 times you hear that. Doctor Horton does not buy that property. Okay? It's a hope and a dream that somebody lost $70 on. Mhmm. And, man, I just... If you would just keep doing what's working and keep slowly chipping away at the progress, you're going to be a lot farther along in the end. You can still do the subdivides. You can still grow your business in that way, but I would do it smart.

Clint Turner1:13:37I wouldn't just kinda jump all into it. So it... It's all the rage right now. It's what everyone's talking about. And if you got something that generates consistent income and cash flow, you've got something that 99% people don't have right now. And I would really focus on how you maximize whatever that niche is before jumping to the next thing.

Brandon Parker1:13:58Yeah. As a bit of a contrarian, you've got me thinking, like, it would be fun to just go to desert squares and just start doing the land geek model, just going really

Clint Turner1:14:08hard on that while everyone else is getting into simple subdivides and... Man, I think about it all the time. I think about it. Because there's another well known guy in the space who started right around when I did, and he never really stopped doing desert squares. Mhmm. And I was talking to him about his no no portfolio the other day, and I was like, if I would've just kept doing that, I don't know. Like, I'm happy with how everything turned out. But, I mean, he has got a massive amount of equity in a cash flowing no no portfolio he's built. Like, we're talking 8 figures. Yeah. Right?

Clint Turner1:14:39Which is... And it's just because he didn't get sidetracked. He just continued to build systems. He continued to focus on how can you be more efficient. Do one more deal this quarter. Do one more deal next month in the thing that was working. And when it stops working, of course, you need to figure out a pivot. And... But if it's still working, man, don't run away from it.

Brandon Parker1:14:57Please. You know what, Clint? Here's, like, the... Here's the thing is you're the quintessential entrepreneur. Like, I'm reading about you did the iPhone repair in high school, flipping couches and ATM business. Like, you're the you're that guy. And I think that a lot of land investors are entrepreneurial spirited, and it's so hard to not keep growing into the next interesting thing. Like, you've grown all the way into complicated... Really complicated deals. You like hairy deals, as you put it.

Brandon Parker1:15:28Like, there's a reason for that. I think there's... I think people are built for that type of progression. So staying in the boring thing that's gonna pay off over time, it's just... Don't know how many... I can't do it. It doesn't feed my soul. But what I always remind people is you started this business

Clint Turner1:15:47for two reasons. You started it to have more time and to make more money. Yeah. And a lot of times, when I start talking about... Like, the reason I'll go buy a $2,000,000 deal, maybe $2,500,000 deal for $600,000 outside of title, literally writing deeds on truck beds and... With drug addicts under bridges and things like that aspect, is because, like, I've underwritten a thousand titles in West Texas, Costilla County, Colorado, DFW.

Clint Turner1:16:18Like, I've underwritten title a million times, and I feel very good at underwriting title. And then in the last year, I've learned that that is a strength that I can deploy into doing more deals. Mhmm. And so I like those deals. There's a big high barrier to entry, blah blah blah blah. We can talk about that on the next podcast. But good gosh, dude. If I tried to do that three years ago even, like, I would've been scared shitless. I didn't have the cash pile sitting there. I didn't... Like, I just didn't... I wasn't prepared for it. And we got in this business to make money and have more time.

Clint Turner1:16:49I just had my first kid. And being home, being able to just, like... Because I also have friends who are having kids that work jobs. Right? Mhmm. My wife has friends that have kids where their husbands work jobs. And the number one thing that she tells me that her friend says, man, I wish so and so was home more. Yeah. And I'm like, that's good. We don't have that problem. Right? And I... Like, that's actually why I started this business is so that I could... We could say that. And I know I wanna make 10,000,000... You know, I wanna make $10,000,000 next year and do all these deals and flip all these things and build all this stuff.

Clint Turner1:17:23But at the end of the day, we did this to make money and to have more time. And I think we gotta refocus sometimes that maybe what you're doing right now is that. Right? Maybe you are making more money, and you do have the time freedom that you were searching for. And it's just you hear us talking about big shiny objects. It it get... Don't get me wrong. I've made all the jumps. Right? I've made all the mistakes. But, man, consistency is really it in this game. And especially in land and land flipping, buying and selling land as widgets, If you find it where it's working, just milk it.

Clint Turner1:17:55Like, work it as long as you can until it stops working. If anything, build systems around it so that it's so damn boring that you have to go do something else. But if you find a niche that's working, man, take it a thousand percent all the way until you've maximized what you can efficiently, like, extract from that market and then think about growing the business. Mhmm. Okay.

Brandon Parker1:18:16Yeah. That's a great way to think about it. Building the systems around it, putting people in place to implement those systems, and then working yourself out of your the daily work. Then, okay, now you've built, you've put in the work, you've put in the time, you've done the grind. So you deserve to now go get that next shiny object, but not until everything running smoothly. So you're you're not abandoning something to go to the next thing. You're... You've graduated.

Clint Turner1:18:40Yeah. It's like you have... It... Mean, you... I could think about it as we've built this thing so that it's so freaking boring that I have time again. Right? And I'm just so bored. I can't sit still on my hands. I have to go do something else. Yeah. And there's little discussions you can get into there, but for the most part, when you've got there. What I did, I made the mistake of getting there, getting bored. Let's not do that anymore. Let's do this other thing. And huge mistake.

Clint Turner1:19:11Lost a ton of money. Created a lot of stress in my life for doing that. When, like, in reality, I should still be flipping small, medium sized lots in West Texas, Southern Colorado, Northern Arizona. Like, I would... There's no reason I shouldn't have another wing that's still doing that, and I don't. Because I jumped in to do what I... The types of deals I do now, which, again, everything happens for a reason. It works out. But I would've made a lot more money faster if I hadn't done that.

Brandon Parker1:19:34Mhmm. That's a great note to end on there, Clinton. Love to have you back on the show because it's... There's tons of knowledge that you've got. You could get into all kinds of stuff. What do you... What are your parting thoughts for the guests? Where can they find you online and... Or listeners, let's call them? Yeah. You can follow me on Twitter. You can follow me on Instagram. You can follow me on Facebook. You can...

Clint Turner1:19:54I don't know what what other social medias there are. You can probably follow me there. YouTube. The YouTube channel. At the end of the day, I do most of this just to do more deals or find people who wanna invest with me. So if that's you, all my inboxes are open. I'm in a social platform. Bring me a deal.

Brandon Parker1:20:10Always happy to talk about investing in land alongside us. That's all I got for you, Brandon. Killer. The show is called Legends of Land, and it's named after people like you. So thanks for your time,. Good to see you, man. The Legends of Land show.