Dan Haberkost : Front Range Land

Brandon Parker00:00This is Brandon Parker. Welcome to the Legends of Land Show where it's my job to deconstruct the tactics of elite land investors, how they think about their business, and strategies that drive their success. My guest today is Dan. He's the CEO of Front Range Land, a Colorado based real estate entrepreneur who has completed hundreds of land deals nationwide and executed over 12 new construction projects since 2019. Began Dan began investing at age 21 with a duplex in Ohio. He now owns dozens of rental units.

Brandon Parker00:31He's a former recruiting professional who graduated debt free while working full time through college. Avid outdoor enthusiast and reader of history and science. In this conversation, we're gonna talk all about Dan's business and get into land. 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. Legends of Land Show starting now.

Brandon Parker01:04Dan, welcome to the show. How are you doing today, Dan? I'm good, Brandon. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Absolutely. You've got a interesting background. Mean, it sounds like you took off right from the beginning. And what was it like? Tell me about the first deal. Like, you're 21 and you just pop in? Yeah. That works. Yeah. It goes back to high school and college where I started working pretty young and

Dan Haberkost01:26I managed a tree farm in Ohio in high school and then he also had rental properties, the owner of the farm. And he'd go to Aruba for a good portion of the year and it was my job to manage the farm, take care of his house, and deal with any tenant inquiries or problems and so that was my first little foray into real estate. Had no idea at the time that I'd ever have anything to do with it but and because I started working early, I mean, I was managing people when I was 16, 17, 18 and then in college, it was the same sort of thing. I had to work to pay for it because I paid for it and first two years, I went to community college.

Dan Haberkost01:58So, got away with working part time and paying for it and then, the last two years going to an actual university, I had to work full time to manage to do that without debt and that sucks. Didn't have much fun in college. However, I learned how to manage people. I gained a skill set that most people don't get until much later in life and so by the time I was finishing college, I've been managing people for years, working full time, going to school full time, and I thought, alright, I'm graduating with a middle class salary. I don't have any debt. What can I do once the burden of school work is done to get myself ahead financially in life because for me, money just represents freedom ultimately and so, I started reading different books and everybody else, it was Rich Dad, Poor Dad that was the light bulb moment?

Dan Haberkost02:42I read that book when I was 20 or I might have been 21 at that point and then, I said, alright, real estate it is because that concept was just really, it really resonated with me, right? The idea of investments making you money in perpetuity and so, I went and bought a house hack. I bought a house hack in Parma, Ohio on Road for anybody who knows where that is just outside of Cleveland. I still own that today. I bought it for $134,500 I believe is what it was and I lived in one side, rented out the other. Shortly after, I I didn't want to stay in Ohio.

Dan Haberkost03:14I ended up moving to Colorado and I bought another house hack. Just a single family home. Renting out all the rooms. Kept the duplex in Ohio. And at that point I realized the low and no money down stuff is great for a rental or two. Great for a small scale. But if you really want a accrue a substantial portfolio quickly, you've gotta make money and a lot of it. My job at the time when I had moved to Colorado, I ended up getting a remote recruiting job. It was okay, but it wasn't gonna take me where I wanted to go. So, had started going to real estate meetups in Colorado Springs and I met a guy who'd been doing land and development for the last forty years and every weekend, I would drive an hour South of Colorado Springs to Pueblo West for anybody who knows where that is about two hours South of Denver and I learned from him.

Dan Haberkost04:01He was building houses, simple infill spec houses and he taught me how to do that. He taught me the significance of infill lots of shovel ready land and my first few deals were just sourcing lots for him or some of his friends that were building down there and assigning them for a thousand dollars. Doing these little flips. And over time, I learned and took his business model and ran with it, and then also living in a house where I was renting out all the rooms, my living expenses were almost nothing. And so I left my job.

Dan Haberkost04:32I left my job in 2019. Front Range Land was born and I took that and I ran with it. And years later, I've continued to buy rental properties slowly and steadily, bought and sold land all over the country, continually doing those infill spec projects in Pueblo West, and that's what's got me to today.

Brandon Parker04:51Let's see. That's fantastic. I love that. Love the real estate journey. Real estate feels like the quintessential entrepreneur path because there's so many ways to do it. How did you go from it's it sounds like the transition that it was infill lots into land. Where did you go after infill lots, and what's the path in land look like? What are you buying, and what are you up to?

Dan Haberkost05:16Yeah. I mean, the first 100 plus deals were all just infill lots, flip to builders. I don't think I bought a lot over, like, 1.2 acres until I had done well over 100 deals because I didn't need to and it worked very well. Over time, we could get into the water tap story I referenced before we started recording but I was doing a lot of business in Pueblo West and it was almost entirely there. Most of the rentals are in Colorado Springs and one day, the Metro District which is agency that oversees Pueblo West, all the utilities, they used to oversee streets and roads, not anymore.

Dan Haberkost05:50They decided, we need to shut down all new water taps because they had not managed their water rights very well during the boom of twenty twenty, twenty twenty one. They were getting used up quickly and they said, woah, we need to pump the brakes here. We're gonna run out of water and we don't have the resources to buy more. For anyone in the East Coast, I grew up in Ohio, right? That's foreign to you if you're by the Great Lakes. There's plenty of water but if you go out West, water is a scarce resource and especially for these small towns that don't have the financial wherewithal like a Denver, Colorado Springs has And so with no warning, my whole business was shut down.

Dan Haberkost06:26At least the land side of things. Thankfully, I had bought a water tap for a new build I was doing like the week before this happened. So, that project continued forward but everything else shut down and at first, we didn't know when they were gonna open the taps back up. We didn't know if they were gonna open them back up. I didn't know if all this land that I had a lot of money sunk into was just worthless now. Thankfully, in hindsight, over the next couple months, they went through number of meetings and processes and decided, okay, we're gonna open these back up at a higher price with a set allocation per year, and we're gonna be out after a couple more years.

Dan Haberkost07:03Now, soon thereafter, the market really slowed down. They still haven't run out quite yet, but it really slowed down the whole market, increased the cost to build. For a couple months, we were just frozen and didn't know what was going to happen. And so that was what prompted me to go to other markets initially.

Brandon Parker07:20And how'd you go into other markets, and how were you getting your deals in that market, and then how'd that change when you moved to other markets?

Dan Haberkost07:30So a mix of mail and cold calling. Been doing cold calling since 2021 and mail since 2019 and so I just applied that to other places. It's funny at the time. A friend of mine had messed mentioned an old subdivision that had kind of been a failure. Mostly wasn't built out called Lehigh Acres, and I didn't know what that was at the time. And so I mailed there and got a bunch of deals there. And so that was my first for foray outside of Colorado. And then that expanded to all over Florida, North Carolina. I've done miscellaneous deals all over the place that people have just brought me but North Carolina, Florida, and Colorado have been my bread and butter and to answer your original question is I've expanded and continued to do business in new places.

Dan Haberkost08:12I'm working really aggressively right now. My team, my guys are continuing to do the small land deals and I'm working to take down some bigger subdivisions and as I look to the future, that's really where I want to take the business because we spend so much time and effort on the direct to seller marketing to get deals. But if you can just pick up a thousand acres or 500 acres, you can have inventory for years and the complexity is not anymore around negotiating killer discounts and direct to seller marketing, managing acquisition guys, the complexity, the skill in the business is more around raising the money, structuring it appropriately, and then the the skill set around how you're dividing property, how you're allocating CapEx dollars, and then how you're dispoing it and that's really where I wanna move as time goes on and so I'm actively doing that right now.

Brandon Parker09:04And what are some of the top lessons that you've learned doing larger subdivisions and what might be a number one mistake newbies make?

Dan Haberkost09:13So I can't make that. I can't really comment on that, and I'm doing that now. I have 466 acres in Oklahoma that I'm under contract on. Almost through due diligence. I think I've got the money put together. A big one in Colorado on the verge of going under contract. So, I am making that transition right now but I can still answer that generally because I have a lot of friends that are much much further ahead of me and it, I'd say the number one mistake people make is the structuring of the debt. There is just a lot of uncertainty. Things can change, right?

Dan Haberkost09:43Things can change over and as you move into longer projects, whether it's new construction or a subdivision, the longer you're exposed to change, the more risk your estimates end up being wrong. And so you need to be able to hold. If you go and get, say, an investor loan, you're expecting your subdivided take twelve months and it balloons at the end, that could happen. That's a problem, and that's how people go broke all the time. I'd say from what I have observed, poorly structured debt or ballooning debt is the number one reason I think people go broke in real estate.

Dan Haberkost10:19I think that applies to subdividing as well, but I'll be able to comment on that further in the future.

Brandon Parker10:24And you got a little bit of a lesson in the unexpected with the water taps thing. It's like you you can plan for everything, but, yeah, you never know.

Dan Haberkost10:33It... The... Yeah. That's just one example. I mean, this is... This happens all the time. There was a killer lot we got in Florida end of last year. We closed on it December 20, something like that, and then January the first county changed the laws and you could no longer park RVs there which was like the number one draw for it. We still ended up selling it. Someone's just building a house there. It still is a good deal but it dramatically reduced what we could sell it for. It took much longer to sell and I've had this happen over and over again with government regulations changing and really screwing you over.

Dan Haberkost11:06Yeah. I mean, you just, there's a lot of unknowns in the business and this is why I'm more and more a fan of having a few markets that you know really well and sticking with them.

Brandon Parker11:18And how do you pick your markets? You went out to Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, and then you started specializing. Did you test a bunch of places? Did you land, or did you just kinda do really good due diligence in the beginning and then land a couple places? How did you end up in the places you are?

Dan Haberkost11:35It's a mix. So the Colorado markets, I lived there at the time, and a lot of the markets, you know, the guy that taught me land and development, he lived in Pueblo West. I went to Pueblo West and he showed me a few other markets. He showed me Lehigh Acres at the time because that's nothing new. People have been buying and selling land there for decades. So, he was the source of the first several markets and then, beyond that, I would just look around and find other very homogenous subdivisions with lots of land that hadn't been built out with lots of sales and just try em And then beyond that model got harder and harder with the simple infill.

Dan Haberkost12:11And so not necessarily looking for subdivisions, but just going to the parts of the country that I knew were growing that I'd never heard of before and seeing where are there really strong ratios of solds versus for sale and just testing places and then, along with that, all the way, we're continually meeting competent realtors and so, I'll ask my realtors all the time. What are you seeing? Where is growing that we're not doing business? Where's growing that most people don't know? I found a lot of markets way. So it's been a mix, but it's not quite as...

Dan Haberkost12:42It sound a lot smarter sometimes in hindsight. The reality of business, I think, is you're stumbling along and figuring it out as you go, and it's been true with market selection as well.

Brandon Parker12:51That's actually a great take. Survivorship bias. It's like you... A bunch of stuff's happened and you have these markets, but it wasn't like some tactical plan in the beginning. That that totally makes sense. So the... You... How are you... How much data are you pulling, and what's it look like? Are you pulling 10,000 records? What type of filters? And you don't have to, like, give away your exact counties and things, but just what's your strategy around pulling data, and then how often do you send it? How often do you cold call it versus mailing it, and what's that whole thing look like?

Dan Haberkost13:25So, 15 to twenty, zero records a month and there are places I know very well and we hit those on a consistent iteration. I have a prime market iteration sheet where all the different areas are broken up and every five to six months, we cold call and mail them again over and over again. There's places I've been mailing for six years and you still get deals because it's always influx. It's just like any business and then, along with that, we're always testing new places, places within a few hours of booming areas, places that are referred to me, and we will mail and call the same data all at once because it's, I mean, it's so cheap and easy to call.

Dan Haberkost14:07I don't see any reason not to and let's see. I'm trying to keep track of all the points I want to make here. I have gotten more specific with the mail I'm sending where it's really niched down and the mailers are really targeted to the specific subdivision or the specific neighborhood and there might be a background that's a picture of, hey, here's a lot we just bought in such and such neighborhood. We'd like to buy yours too and that's really helped and of course, being branded Colorado, Front Range Land is the business.

Dan Haberkost14:42Colorado mailers do much better and then, finally, I have VA scrubbing tax lien lists. I have found all sources outside of direction in the county to be totally useless and you have to go direct to get that. I mean, I use PropStream for all of our normal data but PropStream is useless for tax lien lists. So, it's not accurate. I've tried so many sources. It's never accurate and so, always has to be direct from the county. So, I have VAs manually pulling those and then, we hit tax lien list because those are very reliably a source of deals.

Brandon Parker15:13Are tax lien procedures in each county different?

Dan Haberkost15:18Yeah. Or...

Brandon Parker15:20Okay. So is it very... You need to know the tax lien procedures in each county? I was trying to find a way to use AI to go into... AI agents to go into counties and scrub for taxing lists manually because like you're saying, you gotta do it manually because the data is worthless. But if you were to get tax lien lists for an entire state somehow, could you effectively do tax liens in 15 different counties, or do you need to know specifics about each of those counties?

Dan Haberkost15:50To be clear, I'm not buying the tax liens. We're just mailing the people who are years buying on their taxes and they're often a good source of deals. So, I don't necessarily need to know the procedure of each county but what's challenging is where is the data? So, some counties you can find last year's list sitting online. A lot of counties don't have it. A lot of counties only post each year leading up to the sale for maybe a month or sixty days and then they take it down. You call in and you have to fight heck to get someone to send it to you a lot of times and so that's what creates the complexity especially in the South.

Dan Haberkost16:26I mean, technologically speaking, it's so backwards a lot of times. I mean, looking at some of these assessors websites and there's just the data's not available online. I mean, still doing business in North Carolina. They still won't send wires. Most of these these escrow attorneys. They'll only ship checks which is obscene but it also the incompetence creates an opportunity and so to to actually it just depends, right? A lot of Florida markets are much better where you can easily find it online or it's clearly labeled but even then, it's not labeled whether it's land or a house or apartment or commercial strict center.

Dan Haberkost17:02So, you still have to do a lot of scrubbing. Sometimes, you can find that based on the legal description or assessed value or improved an improvement value but oftentimes not. It's literally just parcel number, seller name, address, and amount owed, and you have to scrub one by one to determine, do they still own it? Did they end up selling it? And is it a piece of land?

Brandon Parker17:24K. Yeah. That that makes sense. I mean, in these inefficiencies, that's where a lot of opportunity is. Sounds like you're finding that. That's cool. You mentioned you're waiting five or six months and then going back to these counties. You've been hitting some places for six years. Do they remember you? Do they have a letter from you from the past sitting around sometimes? Or is that kinda like,

Dan Haberkost17:46how much value is in hitting the same place over years and them knowing your brand or is that just doesn't matter? It's really hard to quantify. We've definitely had people call and say, hey. We've got your mailers over the years, but I can't quantify that. I will say regardless of whether they remember you, it's just being in front of people when it's the right time. And so this, I remember this was really exemplified to me in 2023. I remember this. I had an acquisition manager that was out for a week. And so I was dealing with some of his leads.

Dan Haberkost18:17And we had just mailed Pueblo West for the, I don't know, 20. So 20 at the time. And this lady calls and she goes, yeah, I guess I'm ready to sell. You can have it for $8. She volunteers the number. So we bought it for $8. And this lady's literally gotten 20 some mailers and who knows how many cold calls and sold it for 27. A few months later. And that really just drilled the point home of it's not, oh, I mailed this place. It's done. It's are people ready when they get your mailer?

Dan Haberkost18:48And so if it's a productive market being ever present in the seller's mind is really the key.

Brandon Parker18:53Yeah. That makes sense. What's the main thing that you see life change that makes someone end up selling? Like, you've been talking over three or four years or not talking to them but pinging them for three or four years and all of sudden they sell. What are the maybe the two most common reasons? I think

Dan Haberkost19:12swallowing the fact that they have wasted time and money and taxes every year and coulda had the money elsewhere. This is hard to answer because I can speak a lot to the seller avatar, but what specifically finally prompts them to sell? I don't have a good answer because it's almost never to stress. I mean, almost never. We have taken all verbiage out of our marketing about quick cash flows or any of that sort of things. We, again, I mean, some people still do it and they have success. So, I'm not saying I know everything. We just haven't found that to be productive.

Dan Haberkost19:42It's certainty of closure. They often want because they're tired to get of getting jerked around by wholesalers. Legitimacy, so many of these people are afraid of scams. So having an online profile, a better business bureau account, all that sort of thing helps. And, yeah, just building trust with them that you're an actual competent operator who knows the asset and will close and isn't going to waste their time. Especially in these busy markets. I cannot tell you how many deals we've gotten where they have fallen on a contract with a wholesaler who took a course, who had no money, who didn't put a furnace, and didn't know what they're doing, and wasted three months of their time.

Dan Haberkost20:17I mean, over and over again, we get deals because of that. And what props the decision to finally sell? It's hard to say, but I can tell you it's rarely distress.

Brandon Parker20:28I love that take. I hadn't thought of the rarely distressed. I like how you remove that type of verbiage. What we've been hammering really hard on is the hormozy thing with sales. Like people want three things. They want certainty that this is gonna get done, certainty that you're a trust, basically, that you're a good operator, that you'll do what you say. They wanna know the money's gonna land in their bank account, and then they just want it to happen as fast and easy as possible. So if you can just make it happen, like, we can close this in thirty days, The money will land in your bank account.

Brandon Parker21:00You barely have to do anything. And for sure, we're gonna get this done because this is how competent we are, and everything that we do displays competence. That seems to move the needle a lot, and it's it's not a sexy answer. That's actually kind of boring. Like, you just have to be really good at doing land land flips. Yeah. There's not a lot of magic to it, especially with the... There's so many... So much good information now about flipping land that there's a lot of new people in the space that are underfunded and that are doing their first two or three deals and that are calling and then not calling back.

Brandon Parker21:38And people listen to one of our cold calls the other day, and the person was hammering our cold caller just like, I've had 20 something cold calls, and I get mail once a week. And every one of you guys just calls me and then doesn't call back. Just tell me a number and follow through, and I'll sell them. I was like, woah. Okay. That's actually Sounds like he's motivated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, that's a great lead, actually. Let's like... Yeah. Let's perform for once for these people. Yeah. I like that topic.

Brandon Parker22:08So what type of KPIs do you measure? Like, what are your... Yeah.

Dan Haberkost22:16This has been tricky. So I do measure how many mailers we're sending, feels close for mailers versus cold calling, how many cold calls, how many offers my guys are making? But the reality is, it's simple statistics where if you don't have a large enough sample size, it's really hard to get any meaningful data and you pair that with how much things are constantly changing and then you pair that with how many different markets we're in because it's not like single family houses where, you know, if you're in a major metro, you might have twenty, thirty, forty, zero houses you can mail to and that really helps have a meaningful data set where if I'm sending, I've sent eight to ten, zero mailers a month for years and then, we're cold calling between my two guys.

Dan Haberkost22:59Let's see, two each side. So, call it 16 to twenty, zero calls a month and we're getting better data around the cold calling and I need to aggregate that now that we've been doing that for a while and get to get some KPIs but around mail, I have never been able to pull anything meaningful out that actually manifests in reality because there's been so much change and turmoil and switching markets because this one slowed down and just all so many different variables that I could go back and do averages and tell you numbers, but they don't have any meaning in reality.

Dan Haberkost23:32I have a buddy that's doing a 100,000 mailers a month, so someone like him could get a more real regression to the mean there. So around mail, it's worked. We make money, so I keep doing it. But I can't give you good KPIs. It takes several thousand mailers generally to get a deal, but then sometimes we'll mail a place and send 800 mailers, and in that market, we'll get two deals. And then with cold calling, we started the triple dialer last fall. So I should have some meaningful amounts of data here to really speak to numbers.

Dan Haberkost24:04But again, then I look back at deals closed, but oh, that one ended up having unsolvable probate. So I guess, alright, that falls off. And also... All that to say, Brandon, I know I'm rambling, but I don't have very meaningful numbers of, oh, this is how many calls it takes to make x dollars because it never manifests a reality.

Brandon Parker24:22I feel you. Joke. There's like memes on Twitter about pipeline profit. It's pipeline profit. It's like, it's a mirage that so much changes between how much you think you're gonna get and how much you get. And on the other hand, that's one of the things that's easy to measure, right, when you do a deal. So it might not be accurate, but it's at least a metric. And then the other thing that I think about I'm hammering with my team, we hammer on this. It's which of... We're measuring all these KPIs. We have all these beautiful numbers, but which of these can we make actionable decisions on that make us money?

Brandon Parker24:54If not, we're just measuring because we're being cute. So I think that eighty twenty, like you're saying, sometimes it's just better to do more volume and keep getting deals and making money and not get stuck in the weeds on numbers that aren't necessarily

Dan Haberkost25:08actionable. There's a fine line there for sure. Let me expand on that a little bit because I don't wanna say I can't get anything meaningful out of it. I I look back. I'll go twice a year and try and look back six months in arrears and not the immediate six months because there's such a long cash conversion cycle oftentimes. So in June, I can get really meaningful metrics around June 2024 to the beginning of twenty twenty five. And when I've done this in the past, last year, I'll say I definitely got a much better multiple.

Dan Haberkost25:39If I look at all of the payroll dollars and data money spent towards cold calling, I have been getting a much better return on cold calling than mail but mail has still worked and I don't want to be 100% reliant on cold calling because that can get shut down very quickly with changes in in laws. We got really lucky. I know there was one that got shot down a few months ago. Forget what it was but it was problematic for cold calling. I know that but legislation can really hurt us when it comes to cold calling and so I don't want to be totally dependent on it. So, we keep sending mail but I can get some idea.

Dan Haberkost26:10It's just when I hear people start citing, alright, it takes this many mailers and then this many offers and I get this deal worth x. It's... If you're not sending a massive volume, your numbers are meaningless and you're diluting yourself and just don't understand statistics. If you have a whole team cold calling, you might be able to speak to that with really real numbers if you're doing a huge volume, but you need a big volume to get a regression to the meme.

Brandon Parker26:33That's true. And even with... I mean, we made 5,000,000 cold calls last year. Even with a massive amount of cold calls, it's still a range. Yeah. Because like you're saying, what county are you calling? What type of property are you targeting with the filters? How good is the closer? So, like, those factors end up just skewing the numbers so far that it's still just... Even with massive data, it's still a range. Hard. Yeah. But I like the...

Brandon Parker27:04There's a book by Jon Seffer called Output Thinking, and I like measuring outputs of each of our clients individually, and I think that's what we kind of push people to do is, okay, don't worry so much about how many cold calls we do for you, how many leads we send, how many are qualified. Look at your lead... Your acquisitions manager or salesperson. How many offers are they making on the phone? How many contracts are they sending? How many of those contracts are getting signed? Those are some outputs that are measurable. They don't need to be...

Brandon Parker27:34They're not tied to anything else besides having good conversations about money and sending contracts and then getting those signed. And those are metrics that feel simple and actionable. And that's my current take that these things change all the time. I actually got that idea from... I think I heard AJ Sharma say that, and I was like, that's good. I'm taking that. Anyway, on the cold calling, so let's dig into a little bit about that since we both do that a little bit. What what dialer are you using, and what's the, yeah, what's the management of that look like?

Dan Haberkost28:06Mono dialer? I don't know much about it. I have one guy who kinda oversees the other two callers, and he uploads the data for me, does a lot of that. I know whitelisting all our numbers is really significant and made a big difference. We're always cycling through the numbers. Other than that, I I can't speak to it a whole lot. It seems to be pretty simple, and the guys learned it quickly, and we're on the triple dialer.

Brandon Parker28:31Nice. Yeah. The nice thing about cold calling is there are a lot of talented people that you can get hired onto your team that have done it before. Like, lot of people who've worked in call centers, have managed teams. You might be able to find a person who managed a team of a 100 and ran a little mini call center, and you could just have them working for you. So that's the kind of a cool thing about call centers... Or excuse me, dialing. You mentioned looking back in the cold calling being better dollars right now versus mailers.

Brandon Parker29:02Do you have a ballpark on, like, return on spend for what you've seen?

Dan Haberkost29:08Yeah. When I looked at it last time and again, this was looking back six months in arrears, like I said, and the prior six months, right? So almost a year and all accounting for all the money that was going out for the cold calling. So, I mean, I include employee health insurance, everything. It was about a six to one looking at Hud to Hud profit.

Brandon Parker29:33Beautiful. Beautiful. And then what's the... Do you have that for mailers? Do have an idea on mailers too?

Dan Haberkost29:39Yeah. It was lower for that period. It was more like three. For that specific period, we had gotten much. The mailer deals were very liquid. They were very desirable. They moved pretty quickly, and so I didn't want to stop that. So, yeah, it was closer to three.

Brandon Parker29:58And there's also a bit of a trade off with, like, operational drag because with cold calls, there's more tire kickers. And with mailers, they're self qualifying a bit. So you make it... So that return on spend, I don't know, like, operationally might come back to you a little bit there. You you mentioned that you're really specific and niched down on mailers. How are you doing that at scale? Or what are... What is... What specifically are you doing? You're sending out, like, batches of 500 with pictures of property in their town, or what's that what's that actually look like?

Dan Haberkost30:32Yeah. It's a mix. I mean, we'll still do large mailers out to big lists, but less and less and finding it's worth taking the time to put together really specific mailers but you do it once and then you have that mailer saved and then you pull the data once on PropStream and you have that specific area. You draw it out and then that's saved and it gets easy over time. So, yeah, we'll hit specific neighborhoods, specific subdivisions. I've always been more specific. The whole idea, the idea of mailing a whole county has been very foreign.

Dan Haberkost31:06I understand if you're doing a huge volume, that's just inevitable but I've never really sent more than 10 to twelve, zero mailers a month. So, I've never been and thought these guys send 100, zero mailers a month. That's a whole another story and so if you're new, you don't have much money. I would absolutely niche down. I have so many polygons saved on PropStream of different areas, different zoning, different neighborhoods because this is something that trips people up. I mean, I go to a lot of these busy markets and will only focus on really in demand properties.

Dan Haberkost31:37Maybe that's duplex zone or maybe that's five plus acre pieces amongst the two to three acre area or and that has worked very well finding what is very in demand amongst an endless commodity where you go to a market and there's thousands of single family infill lots and then those few duplex lots are flying off the shelf. So, yeah, we... We've really niched down in that regard. Yeah. I think that's what I want to say.

Brandon Parker32:03That's a great concept. The niching down and sending super specific mailers. I was just listening to just general business. It was Hormozi. He was talking about, okay, you have... You're an agency and you target plumbers and dentists and HVAC, and you do marketing for everyone. And then he said the one of the main problems he sees with businesses is they do it for everyone. Whereas if you do just marketing for plumbers in Austin, then those are the companies that ended up just crushing it.

Brandon Parker32:35And I think that... Probably, it's marketing. This carries across probably to mailers where you're like, okay. I'm mailing for duplex duplex infill lots. I'm not just mailing for infill lots. I'm mailing for duplex infill lots and then spending your marketing dollars more effectively. When those people get that mail, that's gonna convert better because they're like, oh, I have a duplex lot. That's pretty random. This must be the guy. That's a sweet little tip there, especially for people getting... Trying to get off the ground for as little cost as possible. They could put their own time into...

Brandon Parker33:06How do you do that type of research?

Dan Haberkost33:10Yeah, this is another thing that it's just stumbling as you go. This has been a mix of starting by mailing generally and learning as we do due diligence and look at different lots and look at comps. Oh, all these two plus acre ones are flying off the shelf and that is something to consistently look for. If you have an infill subdivision, let's say, and everything is quarter acre and you get the one acre piece, those like that is really consistent or there's a Panhandle market that I like where it's mostly really slowed down. But if you get the five plus acre pieces, those things are like freaking gold.

Dan Haberkost33:43They just... They sell immediately. And so larger lots amongst tons of small lots are consistently quick and profitable. Duplex or multifamily lots amongst single family when there's not many on market has consistently been that. And then beyond that, it's getting really familiar with the market oftentimes via local experts, I. E. Land agents, where, okay, maybe this specific neighborhood is blowing up. We've run into this. I have bought so many lots that were at market value or very close, but I know what's happening, and we sell them substantially higher.

Dan Haberkost34:18I've I've done that so many times by niching down in an area and I'm seeing, okay, these are going up dramatically. The only listings on market are way over the cop value. Things are still moving. There's huge demand. I've done that quite a bit in Florida, Colorado, and the Carolinas, North Carolina primarily. So, talking to local experts is one of the best ways you can do that and I know people do this differently but my business is really dependent on competent realtors.

Brandon Parker34:44That's killer. I have a... One of our clients was trying to break into Idaho forever, and he keeps sending me these lists in Idaho. These people have success in Idaho. I'm like, honestly, I haven't. I don't know. I know Idaho's got killer markets, but no. I haven't. And he keeps... We're doing different things, and all of sudden, he gets on a plane. He flies out there, and he goes to the counties. He hangs out with realtors. He finds some brokers. He has them show him around town. He gets like a actual feel for what's going on, and then he comes back and he starts crushing it.

Brandon Parker35:16He's he's just crushing Idaho now. Like, some of the deals he's pulled through are like, oh, woah. Okay. There's really something if you dive into the angle you're talking about there, there's some serious money to be made. So, that's a cool house. Tell me about how you meet realtors like tactically, how are you finding realtors to talk to or are you getting deals and then finding realtors through your deals? What's that? Are you doing it before?

Dan Haberkost35:42Yeah. Let me say one more thing on the last point. Beyond just the marketing, knowing your market really well helps you close deals because when you can say, hey, Brandon, we need to do a perk test. No, I mean, in this market, there's a lot of lots that are not suitable or at least needed engineered septic. So, we're not going be able to close without a perk. We use such as a soil engineer. It's the confidence that builds in the seller that you're real when they say, oh, I have this offer 50 k, and they'll close in two weeks, and you're only at 40 and say, Brandon, that person clearly doesn't know anything about the market.

Dan Haberkost36:14Did they just mail you an offer? Have you spoken to them? Oh, I got a letter. Okay. Yeah. They don't know what they're doing. They're not gonna close. Maybe they're a sucker and you might get lucky and sell them something without them doing the proper due diligence but we actually operate in this market. So, I hammer this home in my guy's head when we have to delay because of due diligence. Tell them exactly why. Oh, the sewage enforcement office is taking forever to get back to us. Mike, I think he said he's out this week. He's gotta look at it to make sure this thing perks. Right? And that just builds so much confidence with them that, oh, they know the SEO guy in this town and they know they're they're real.

Dan Haberkost36:51So that was the last thing I wanna say there. Now what was your question? I'm forgetting your question now. Yeah. I mean, that's

Brandon Parker36:59a strong point. It's the... It's like this overcommunication of what's happening in the deal. We're communicating, hey. We're on it. Here's what to expect. Also, we know everyone here. Like, we know exactly what's going on. It's almost like you're building confidence with them as things pop up. Yep. And that's... That leads into the things. Are they going to get paid? Is it going to get done easily for them? And and how quickly can it happen? And so if you're building that there, yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Brandon Parker37:29I remember your question. You asked how to actually talk to realtors. Okay. Yep. So, you have to approach this right and especially in busy areas,

Dan Haberkost37:37keeping in mind how many people have wasted realtors time. You have about thirty seconds where they're going to make a split second decision. Is this a real lead or is this another, in a essence, a robo caller that's going to waste my time? That's how realtors are sorting and they do this very quickly in their head and so, I tell my guys, when you're calling realtors, we just look on Zillow. We try and find realtors names who pop up consistently. If we can't, we look for really well done land listings where they clearly knew what they were doing. They sold it quickly and we'll call them and we'll say, hey, Brandon, I see you sold 123 Main Street.

Dan Haberkost38:10We have a property down the street or almost under contract on or sometimes we're under contract on looking for someone to resell it with. Do you like selling land or was that kind of a one off? Do you want more land listings? And that question right away, number one, says, oh, we give realtors listings and number two, hey, we actually have a property and just it takes so much of the pressure off asking them, do you want listings? Oh, you do? Okay. Great. Look, I mean, our realtor that we normally use in search state name, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, whatever.

Dan Haberkost38:41They don't cover this county. So, we're looking for somebody to sell our lots with here. This is where we're at and this is what we're stuck on with this one. Do you have any insight? That's how we do it. So, three or four different ways or two or three different ways. I just told them, we give realtors listings all the time. We're not new to this. We work with other realtors but hey, they don't work here. That's the key and if they're at all combative, you might not want to work with them. You might just want to call more but if you feel like, hey, this is a really competent person. You look em up and they have all the land solds are their name.

Dan Haberkost39:12Okay, I want to work with this person. I have found, look, Brandon, I mean, when we find a realtor in a market, we'll give them listing after listing. Our Florida realtors had over 100 listings with us but I get it. You don't know us yet. If you need me to throw you a couple $100 to help us count this, let me know. And I've never had someone take me up on that, but every time they're... They feel better as soon as you say that.

Brandon Parker39:33Yeah. That's a great point. I was a real estate agent for a time when I first started, and that's 100% true. There's people... A lot of people, they'll even want you to drive them around in your car for a couple weekends and just tell them about the real estate market. You can waste a lot of time. So realtors, after they've been a little bit jaded, they get, will sort through leads with extreme prejudice for sure. Love that approach. Just the opening up, are you even interested in selling land?

Brandon Parker40:04Just shows a lot of knowledge about the market because a lot of realtors like I'm just one or two houses actually. There's not enough money to be made land. And so just showing that you understand that off the rip is setting you apart too. What's your team look like? Who's making those calls? That's a... Someone who's gonna get on the phone with a realtor and sound sophisticated enough to get the realtor's interest. That's not you. Who's that team member and what's that? How'd you find them? What's that look like?

Dan Haberkost40:30Yeah. So, a mix of indeed and referrals. They're all domestic. Zero success. If someone has a accent. Again, I know some people have made that work, but that has not worked for me. So I like in house in house callers personally. And they handle it from beginning to end. I've tried the handoff model, and I couldn't get that to work for me. They generate the leads. They do the due diligence. They'll tag me in our CRM a lot of times and I'll double check it and then they close it themselves and so they're calling realtors and I've trained them all all this.

Dan Haberkost41:01We have very thorough SOP sheet day one SOP videos for new people to watch. And, yeah, they're Americans, and they originate and close the leads.

Brandon Parker41:14You have people... Wait. Originate, you mean they're cold calling also? So you have Americans cold call, close the deal, and then dispo it. They're just like a land... They do the whole thing. No. Because we have agents dispoing. Oh, sorry. But they Yeah. Get in touch with the agents to dispo it.

Dan Haberkost41:36Yeah, I mean, with, I mean, we have a huge contact sheet because I'm not new to this at this point. So, usually, it's they, the agent knows us, they know the drill but yeah, if it's somewhere new, absolutely. I'll go ask for referrals just for friends. I mean, everyone I know is in real estate basically. So, it's pretty easy to get referrals But yes, they handle everything.

Brandon Parker41:53That's cool. So how long have your... How long does it take to train someone up? What's like a ballpark on hourly rate for that type of person, and how long have they stayed with you?

Dan Haberkost42:04The training has varied. I have one guy who had no real estate experience but he was young. He was eager and so it took him a little longer to learn but he was good at talking to people. So, it took a month or two to really get him competent with the real estate lingo. And then I have another guy who's seasoned with real estate and calling but was a little more behind on technologies and systems. And I mean, he jumped right in. He closed deals in his first week, but he's a little slower technology. He's not as young as the other guy. So, that's been challenging as far as my two cold callers.

Dan Haberkost42:35So, give it a month or two to really get them to a level of competency that I wanted at least and then, they're continually learning because there's just so much nuance from one part of the country to another. There's so many just different circumstances you run into with title, with seller problems, everything. It's just there's a lot of difference from place to place. A lot of things that can go wrong and then, each of em have a base of right around 40 and then a commission. One of them wanted to be W two. So his base is a little bit lower but he gets health insurance half paid for and then the other one wanted to be $10.99.

Dan Haberkost43:09So his base is a little higher. And then yeah they both get commission.

Brandon Parker43:13Killer. I've talked to a lot of people about this. So, I'm curious about your commission structure. Do you pay it when the escrow closes or do you pay it when you dispo the deal and how do you, what's that look like?

Dan Haberkost43:27It's a percentage of the HudDahd profit from purchase to resale.

Brandon Parker43:31Beautiful. And the... What's the main lesson you'd say you've learned managing people? Because you started managing people when you were 21. So what sticks out to you there?

Dan Haberkost43:47You just... For me, I mean, this is a little biased just to my personality where I don't get much from recognition. I don't really want to talk to you. If I was working for someone, I don't care. I don't, I just want to go close deals and make money and that is not how most people are. So, I have, okay, we always do morning meetings. I have to, I literally, my girlfriend reminds me, did you give your employees recognition? Did you give your employees rec? It doesn't occur to me to say good job because I find that patronizing and unhelpful but most people like that.

Dan Haberkost44:17So, that probably is the biggest lesson for me just the amount of management, encouragement, and recognition I have to give my guys, definitely.

Brandon Parker44:28Whole different mindset as a business owner, entrepreneur versus someone who's working for a business owner, entrepreneur, definitely come across that as well. Something that sticks out for me is just all the thoughts and vision in my head. I expect people that have worked for me for, let's say, a couple years, I expect them to kind of through osmosis see the vision, and I've realized they're not... They think completely different. They want their paycheck and all this, and it's so being very explicit with that has been something I've been working on lately.

Brandon Parker44:59Here's what we're doing and why we're doing it. Like, just trying to get this out of my head so that... And it can't just be once too. It's gotta be, like, consistently. Here's why we're doing this. Yeah. That's cool. Something I thought of when you were talking about your your SOPs. I just dis... You might have discovered this already, but have you seen NotebookLM? Google NotebookLM? It's... Are you in the Google Google ecosystem? Yep. Yep. Okay. So Google has Gemini, which I haven't used yet either. It also has Notebook LM. Notebook LM is like a like a mini large language model that you basically do pages of notebooks.

Brandon Parker45:34So, like, a page of a notebook could be all of our cold caller training. You can upload YouTube videos from Notion, text documents, PDFs, like anything that I have as far as documenting processes, even videos that I've shot or trainings that I've shot, my Fireflies recordings. I can upload those all into a notebook for cold calling, and then it becomes like a Wow. In... Instant wiki. It almost makes SOP... I mean, I feel... I still feel like I need SOPs, but it's almost like I don't need SOP.

Brandon Parker46:08I can go in there and say, hey. Give me the first ten days of training for a cold caller and that type of thing. The... Or the cold callers have a question, and they could just type it into the search window. Here's a video of Brandon explaining that, or here's the answer, and here's the... Here's a link to the source of a time that Brandon coached on that exact thing. So it, like, brings all the knowledge of the company to a point of just an individual at the company, which is... I think it's gonna... It's pretty cool. I haven't started playing with it too much yet.

Brandon Parker46:39I've just... But I'm excited about it. Anyway,

Dan Haberkost46:43there's some Yeah. I'll have you check that out. ChatGPT has saved me so much time. And don't get me wrong. ChatGPT is interesting where sometimes it'll respond to what I say to my prompt, and it'll summarize what it wants me to do and it's spot on. But then for whatever reason, it just won't do it. It just says it's doing it. Then over and over again, it's literally not doing what it just said. So sometimes it's frustrating and unhelpful. For some things, it's very helpful. Or, you know, concisely summarizing something you're trying to say, grammatical to... Checking grammatical errors, giving ideas both of images, and it's helped me with postcard design, and then creating calculators for me in Excel.

Dan Haberkost47:21It's been awesome. Or just anything I don't know how to do, but there's certain things that it's terrible at still. So it's mixed, but overall, it's been awesome.

Brandon Parker47:28Yeah. What's your favorite... What do you think your favorite, like, top thing that you do maybe on a daily or weekly basis with it? Just in Man, I would say just...

Dan Haberkost47:39ChatGPT is the one I've really used almost exclusively. I've used Canva's image generator for some of her postcards. That's been helpful. With ChatGPT, I would say just creating a 90% accurate synopsis or something I wanna say, a post, and then making it sound less AI generated. Because if you don't edit it, it's a very obvious, oh, ChatGPT created that, or, hey. We're gonna interview this person on our podcast. Look up all of their content ever and give us 12 relevant questions giving this context.

Dan Haberkost48:10And that's been awesome too.

Brandon Parker48:13You have

Dan Haberkost48:15Yes. The Big Picture Blueprint. We focus been a lot on land, but it's not just land. We'll have apartment investors. We'll have business private equity people. So we've gotten some really solid guests lately and been really useful. Wonderful. Say the name of that podcast again and where people can find it. So it's the big picture blueprint. You can find it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts anywhere you listen. And if you just go on... Look me up anywhere, Dan Hepprost on Instagram or Facebook, LinkedIn, you'll find plenty of links to it as well.

Brandon Parker48:49Nice. Nice. So one of the things that as you're as you're doing a lot of deals and you're scaling up and you're even getting into these bigger subdivisions, I think that... What's your constraint become? Does it become funding or what... Like, where is your constraint when you get into scaling up like you are?

Dan Haberkost49:07Capital. Yeah. Definitely capital. Deals are everywhere. It's just they're large, and you need not just the capital, but the ability to hold with a margin of error because you never know how long it's actually going to take to dispo the whole thing. So yeah, I would say capital, which I'm working on very aggressively.

Brandon Parker49:25And what type of capital are you looking for partners, types of terms? Just throw out the

Dan Haberkost49:34quick and dirty of that. Sure. There's a subdivide in Colorado right now that we're on the verge of getting under contract. We should be good as lawyers just overlooking con... Looking over the contract one more time. So 1.5 all in, including utility extensions, and that gives like a 50 k buffer. And then two six to two eight dispo conservatively. I would eight to twelve months to sell off because it's only seven parcels. It's really prime, commutable to Denver, Douglas County, York, Colorado Springs. So, for something like that, we'd give away half the profit if someone would come in and provide the capital.

Brandon Parker50:11Alright. There you go. And then I'm sure that that deal's on the table now and there'll be more in the future. So it's like, you... Are you looking for a longer term capital partner where this is someone who come in and do deals with you multiple times? I'm guessing build a relationship type of thing. Absolutely.

Dan Haberkost50:26Yeah. Absolutely.

Brandon Parker50:29And then are you looking for land investors specifically or just money to come in and... Do you want someone with some expertise that adds that type of value, or does that not matter to you necessarily?

Dan Haberkost50:40Generally, no. Generally, I don't want real estate people because most real estate people are like me or you where they want to be active in the business, active in the deal, and then make a huge return which if you're being active, you should get a huge return. Yeah. But I'm more looking for people that

Brandon Parker50:54are excited by if I can make a 20% cash on cash return that that's excellent, which is most of the world. I just... I'm in a real estate bubble. Yeah. Phil, yeah. What I... As we wind down the podcast here, I'll ask a couple questions. One, what we can go back and hit again that that we've glossed over. And then the other one is if you can say... If you could have one message that would go out to everyone on X or Twitter, just a short, concise message that everyone would see. It doesn't have to be real estate specific. It's just a message for the world.

Brandon Parker51:25What would that be?

Dan Haberkost51:27Oh, gosh. I wasn't expecting any philosophical questions. Something to the effect of... If we're, again, if we're speaking broadly outside of the context of real estate, something to the effect of you're in a bubble of one kind or another and your opinions would be different if you were in a different bubble. Some something that would emphasize emphasize less of the dogmatism and and I'm talking about, I mean, everything in life. People hold on to look at the political divide in our country right now and I think more people should be less sure of themselves and their tribe as being correct in any and all circumstances And just this I'd have to think how to say that succinctly, but that's the message I would wanna get across.

Brandon Parker52:09Yeah. I like it. This is the idea of being extremely objective or I try... I need to try to step out of my bubble a little bit and be more objective,

Dan Haberkost52:20and that's probably a really epic tool just as an entrepreneur. Yeah. I think I read... Do you ever read Howard Marx's memos, Oaktree Capital? Oh, I haven't. No. But I'll... Something I'll write down. These are phenomenal. This guy... He's like Buffett. He's a little younger, but he's been investing for fifty plus years. He's done very well, and he operates under the belief that you can't predict the future. He's not the one trying to predict the future. And so how do you make decisions given the uncertainty that's present every day? And one of my favorite articles he's ever written compared political reality with economic reality.

Dan Haberkost52:54And in political reality, people campaign with all these promises acting as if there are no trade offs. An economic reality states that everything has trade offs. You wanna lower the deficit? Money's gonna get taken from somewhere. You want to let more people into the country or less people into the country? Like, there's trade offs to all of these stances, and everyone that's at least a political zealot speaks as if their stance has no trade offs and that is not reality. In life, there are always trade offs and we're we see this all the time, right?

Dan Haberkost53:25And so politicians are always very dishonest about this of, I'm going to promise the world and there's going to be no downside and that's just how anything works And so I think that is very much a corollary to the point I was trying to make of, okay, maybe you think one thing should be such way, but there's negatives of that too, and you're just not acknowledging those oftentimes when people are very stuck in their political opinions at least.

Brandon Parker53:50Yeah. Even taking a step back, and I could even get a little bit more objective with that. It's okay. So it's not just black or white. There's gonna be trade offs. And then the other factor is there's second and third order effects that would be unpredictable that are gonna come up that we don't know about, but they're gonna happen too. And we can kinda guess at what those might be, but... So there's the immediate trade offs, then there's things that are unpredictable because they're second and third order effects and we're not supercomputers, so we don't know yet. That is good to take into account business decision making, the idea of I need to make decisions, I need to make them exceptionally fast and eightytwenty decide, is this going to point us the right way, get feedback, and then keep course correcting and just keep making decisions and try to predict those second and third order effects, realize there's trade offs, and just try to do as good as possible, but not get paralyzed with trying to discover all the outcomes.

Dan Haberkost54:50Yeah. And everything is more a spectrum of probability. I mean, you have to make some level of prediction or else... Right? Because if I thought that real estate was gonna drop by 50%, if I really believe that, then I would probably sell everything, but okay, I guess I don't believe that. So I am making some level of prediction, but like, you have, it's more of a spectrum of what are the chances, how do I prepare for the risk that I'm wrong, And then how do I make decisions given that uncertainty? Where can I find, alright, I'm pretty certain that such and such will happen, so I will deploy my money or not, if you think, depending on what you think is gonna happen?

Dan Haberkost55:25So I'll have to send you some of Howard Marks' articles because I think he summarizes it really well and he's speaking from a point of fifty years of success and so I think a much... That's a much stronger platform. So I'll reference.

Brandon Parker55:37I love that. Howard Marks memos. I've been into the Bezos memos, his annual shareholder address. Those are something I've been interested in. So I love the Howard Marks. It's Marks, m a r k s? Yep. Okay. Cool. Cool. Great. A great one to end on there. You got any other life philosophy you wanna drop on us?

Dan Haberkost55:59No. Not particularly. I do... The last thing I would say is if you're getting into land, I would find a value sooner rather than later. Learn to build houses. That's been helpful. But you want to be able to monetize lots that you're buying close to market value along with the good deals. And I think that creates a much better moat around your business than only being upon shop for land.

Brandon Parker56:21That's a great call. That's actually... I've talked to a few 100 land investors who... Because of our agency, and that's something people always ask. Like, what are the people who do good in land doing? And it's that. They are... They have the normal flips happening because that keeps their cash flow decent, but they've found a way to niche down, specialize, and just add value. They're adding value and getting bigger deals, whether that be subdividing or they got a tractor and they build a road and everything.

Brandon Parker56:53They're doing something where they can buy at market value and get big returns. Yeah. And, yeah, great call. Dan, you're a legend, man. This was a fun talk. Thank you. Me and you even before this started hit on mountain biking and surfing. We've got that in common. We'll... I'm sure we'll stay in touch. Any final thoughts or anything we skipped over that you wanna touch on?

Dan Haberkost57:13No. I think the value add thing was the last thing that I wanted to say. I just think it's gotten more competitive. Certainly, I can't send a 100 mailers and get a deal like I could six years ago, but it's still a blue ocean compared to most real estate assets and everything comes in waves. But I still think the best version of this business is focusing on a value add and that will keep you kinda in your own... At your own level that much fewer people are at. And so when there's influxes of other people sending mail and gurus teaching new people, it won't matter as much.

Brandon Parker57:43Alright. Dan, looking for capital. We've got the podcast, and we will have you back on the show, invite you back on in the future because this is a great talk. So thanks for coming on today, Dan. Awesome. Thanks, Brandon. I enjoyed it. Alright. The Legends of Land Show.