Make Money Investing in Land with RETipster Seth Williams

How knew you can flip land just like you can flip a house?! Well, you absolutely can AND become successfully unemployed doing it. Seth Williams from RETipster shows us just how to do it.

Today, I am excited to have Seth on this podcast. Seth’s website is REtipster.com, and he has figured out how to do land investing and invest in real estate. Like Seth, you can be successfully unemployed.

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How Seth Williams makes money for his family by investing in land

Seth has a few different things going on. The first thing he had success with is the land investing business. Land works for him, as opposed to every other type of real estate, because it is easy to find deals for 10 to 30 percent of market value.

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Seth got involved in land investing in 2008 in Michigan. It was a terrible time to invest, but he was able to get a list of people who were about one to two years behind on property taxes. He sent them all postcards asking if they wanted to sell.

He received a lot of phone calls. His first land investment was a half acre, and he paid $331. It was very cheap and he sold it 11 days later on Craigslist for $1,900. He didn’t need to take out debt, he could do it from home, and it wasn’t risky, and he figured that he could do pretty well on it.

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When he got started, it was with small lots, but now, it is with much more substantial properties. You don’t need to put a lot of money into it, if you don’t want. He hasn’t seen any of the properties he has bought in years.

The business is two-dimensional in nature, because there are no tenants and he doesn’t have to improve the properties.

It comes down to understanding where to find motivated sellers.

How did you scale this business so you could be successfully unemployed?

Many people who do the land business do seller financing.

When buying, many people pay cash, but seller financing is an option when selling. The vast majority of banks will not lend money on vacant land, unless the buyer will be developing it.

Many people don’t have the cash up front to buy, so, for a $10,000 piece of land, they could pay Seth $1,000 up front, and pay the other $9,000 through payments over the next three to five years.

Every state is different with seller financing. The strategy is to buy the land investment really cheap and get most or all of the initial investment in the down payment. The rest is pure profit.

If you can do a lot of them, you can set up a lot of streams of income that are mostly passive. There are no tenants, so you won’t get calls.

On the flip side, there are downsides to seller financing. You don’t always get your initial investment back and it can slow the process of getting your money back. There are also hassles involved, because you could have a buyer that stops paying.

Every state has a standard template you need to follow, as a lender on the land investment. There are a lot of moving pieces and it is not the right fit for everyone.

Seth doesn’t do a lot of seller financing any more, but if you want to get rich off of this, seller financing is a way to get there.

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How did it work out with your wife, when you wanted to quit your job?

Seth was able to make a full-time income on a part-time basis. When he first started, he put about 20 hours a week into it. Now he puts about five hours a week.

He is making more now than he was in his full-time job, because he is able to automate some things.6

With his blog, the land business, and rental properties, it was more than enough money to make it okay.

Seth was scared to pull the trigger and quit his job.

He didn’t think he deserved that good of a life, but his wife was okay with it. She is not a high risk type of person, so that helped him make the switch.

The process to investing in land step by step

The most effective way to start drumming up business is through direct mail.

This is the easiest way to scale, because it doesn’t take up a lot of time.

Figure out where to get your list. Seth gets most of his lists from a service called Data Tree.

By using this link, you will receive discounted access.

Find a data service that allows you to filter certain types of land owners you want on your list. You can get very specific with the ZIP code, size of the land, etc. This is the easiest, most efficient way to do it.

Seth first got his lists from the county, but it can be a mess to sort through. Ideally, you want an Excel file or CSV file, so you can sort them and delete duplicate owners.

How to find the best market for investing in land, in and out of your area

Seth decided to start with an area he was able to drive to, but it isn’t necessary. Now, he invests in land all over the country.

It is best to figure out the best market to sell these land investments. Seth doesn’t do a lot in Michigan anymore, even though he lives there.

You can use online sites like Zillow, Datatree, and others that show the owners of the land parcels.

If we have a good list, what is the next step?

There are a couple of different paths you can go down, when sending out the direct mailing. The first is a neutral letter or postcard that says you are interested in buying their land and asking them to contact you if they are interested in selling.

Another way is through a blind offer, but this can get complicated. You spend a lot of time on the front end figuring out what market values are on a per acre basis, based on the location. Then you use a formula to come up with a low offer price and send a contract.

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Both approaches have drawbacks. The blind offer doesn’t give you the chance to get to know the owner and offer more, but the postcard does.

If you have plenty of time, postcards makes sense, but if you are short on time and have more money to spend, blind offers may be a better option.

How you can find land to invest in and flip for a profit

The past couple of years, Seth has mostly done blind offers.

He gets a lot of leads from traffic that hits his website. However, this is something you cannot depend on when you are first starting out.

Seth has a separate website that allows people to submit their land and it sends out an automatic offer. Prior to this, he was spending time figuring out how much to offer.

One of the questions he asks is, “What do you think the market value is?” Land is very subjective. Whatever number they put in there, the website will take the number and multiply it by nine percent, wait an hour, and then sends a response to the seller.

Seth is not legally obligated to do anything at this point, but it starts the conversation. Most people say he is crazy, but a lot of people say yes. He doesn’t spend any time on these leads, until they say yes.

This used to take him a ridiculous amount of time.

You can automate the land investing and buying business with online tools like websites and autoresponders

This automation was actually his idea that he shared with someone who was already working on creating a WordPress theme, specifically for the land business.

The theme is called REI Land Leads, by a company called REI Conversion. A man named Jesse reached out to Seth.

If someone is willing to sell you their piece of land for investing, make sure you do this.

Part of this is negotiation and sometimes there is back and forth. Sometimes, Seth will back out and say he isn’t interested. Many times these sellers will come back in a week or so, because it is easier to work with him than sell it themselves.

If the land is cheap, like $500, and the value is worth less than $10,000, there is a very cost-effective, quick way to close this in-house without a title company. This option is on the table, because a lot of times, the economics don’t make sense, if it costs more to close on the land investment than it does to buy it. If you know what to look for, you can close on it yourself.

If the market value is more than $10,000, it makes more sense to take it to a title company. This takes a lot of work off of his shoulders.

Once Seth owns the land, it is all about selling it as quickly as he can.

Using Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for Land Investing

Seth uses both of these platforms for land investing, but he sells more with Facebook Marketplace.

When he first started, Facebook Marketplace was not a thing. Craigslist is still effective, but people are already on Facebook and they don’t need to go to a different website.

Another one is Zillow For Sale by Owner. It is easy to create a free listing and put it on there. A lot of people are on Zillow but you may get less traction.

If you are willing to pay a little bit of money, LandWatch, Land Century, Lands of America, and Land and Farm are other sites you could use. Seth is not convinced these sites are worth it, because if you have the right deal, it will sell itself.

Seth hasn’t made a regular practice of putting deals on the paid sites.

How Seth is giving to make the world a better place

Seth does a lot of volunteering with his church. He is one of their head videographers.

He and his family also sponsor several children around the world, through Compassion International and World Vision.

Seth is around if his family needs him. He has the freedom to take a morning off and spend time with them.

Advice Seth would give to his younger self

Try it one more time. There are a lot of things Seth has been able to do in life, because he kept trying and pushing forward.

He felt the burnout and self-defeating thoughts, but he kept at it until it worked. It is because of this that he has gotten anywhere. He didn’t give up at the first sign of stress.

Realize that nothing great will come easy. Some things you just need to work hard at and slog through.

The advice for anyone starting out and trying to become successfully unemployed.

Everybody needs their own reason of why they want to do this and they need to see a win that inspires them.

Go through the process at least once, preferably two or three times, to see if it works. It doesn’t always work the first time. It helps to ease into it and get that first win.

The tools Seth recommends we use in our daily life

Slack is something Seth uses every day to communicate with other people. Rather than texting or emailing, it is easy to keep it all in one spot.

Trello is a task management, free software that helps you keep track of where different things are at.

One non-fiction book that has helped Seth in life or business that he recommends to others?

Crucial Conversations, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph, Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

How Seth Williams went from Employee to Successfully Unemployed

Seth’s first notable job out of college was working as a credit analyst for a small business financing company. He was pretty soft spoken and people didn’t think much of him, because he kept to himself.

He wondered if this was it for him. He wanted to make more money and didn’t want to be employed, but he didn’t know how to get there.

He spent a lot of time looking into flipping houses and buying rental houses. All he knew was looking on the MLS at properties, but it seemed impossible. He didn’t have an edge.

When he started looking into land deals, investing seemed possible.