From Rentals and Flipping to Raw Land Success with Landon and Teria Harris

From Rentals and Flipping to Raw Land Success with Landon and Teria Harris - Feature Image

Landon and Teria Harris started out rehabbing single-family homes. After a few successful projects, they realized it was not the direction they wanted. The amount of time, work, and capital was more than they wanted to manage. Their love of real estate led them to other investing opportunities. After hearing a podcast on vacant land sales, they immediately knew land investing was the right direction for them!

Their land business began in 2019 where they immediately set up structure, processes, and tools to build their land business. Within a few short months, their business soared! They were able to build a successful land business and replace Landon’s full-time job in the first year. 

In this episode, we talk to Landon and Teria about the challenges of rental property investing as well as house flipping, how that experience led them to invest in raw land, how they purchased 10 parcels for just $14,000 on their first deal, and the systems and processes they’ve set up to make their raw land business run as passively as possible.

In This Episode We Cover:

  • How Landon and Teria Harris got into real estate investing
  • How their experience with house flipping and single-family rentals led them to shift to raw land investing
  • How much it cost them to buy their first raw land deal
  • How much it costs to market for raw land
  • And much more!

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Transcript
Neil Henderson:

Landon and Teria Harris started out rehabbing single family homes. After a few successful projects, they realized it was not the direction they wanted. The amount of time work and capital were more money than they wanted to manage. Their love of real estate led them to other investment opportunities. After hearing a podcast on vacant land sales, they immediately knew land investing was the right direction for them. Their land business began in 2019, where they immediately set up structure processes and tools to build that land business. Within a few short months, their business soared, they were able to build a successful land business and replace Landon's full time job in the first year. In this episode, we talked to Landon and Teria about the challenges of rental property investing, as well as house flipping, how that experience led them to invest in raw land, how they purchased 10 parcels for just $14,000 on their first deal, and the systems and processes they've set up to make the role and business run as passively as possible. I'm Henderson and this is the road to family freedom. Before we get to this week's show, we'd like to make you aware of something we are self storage investors, we buy existing self storage facilities and vacant buildings that can be converted to self storage in the Sunbelt. We buy, buy them with cash and some loans. And we use private lenders who become Equity Partners in our deals, these Equity Partners share in the cash flow in the profits when we sell when we find a deal that we're considering. We call the Equity Partners and offer them to share the ownership secured by the property. So if you've ever driven by a self storage facility and thought I wonder who owns those things, and you have any interest in learning more about the storage business, we'd love to chat with you head on over to road to family freedom comm slash storage. That's road to family freedom, comm slash s t o r a g and set up a time to check We look forward to speaking with you.

Unknown Speaker:

All right, and I thought of us Let's hit the road to family freedom.

Neil Henderson:

Well land and into Rhea Harris, welcome to the road to family freedom.

Teria Harris:

Thank you happy to be here.

Neil Henderson:

Yeah, we were having some good laughs about parenting during a pandemic before we jumped online. So if we're a little giggly to start, that's, that's the reason. So before we dig in a little deeper into raw land investing, I want to hear about a high level view of your sort of journey into real estate investing and your previous experience.

Landon Harris:

So you know, we started real estate, wow, I'd probably say almost 10 years ago with renting. And we started with rental houses, but I'm rental houses and you know, going through that whole process, it was a big headache, and transitioned into more flipping houses. And we'd gotten into flipping houses, probably like seven years ago, six, seven years ago. And the the amount of money it was taking to do a mass to do a, you know, rehab on houses, was getting expensive, and even buying a rehab was was starting to go up, especially hearing the Atlanta market. So we you know, we we got to a point we started to, you know, look around, what else could we do? We love real estate. My wife and I both have been in it for a while and we've enjoyed it. But I think with residential, house flipping was getting really tough. And then, you know, we, we stumbled upon a podcast and with the land geek, and, you know, we took off from there and started working with raw land, and it's become our thing, and it's growing and doing really well.

Neil Henderson:

So how many rental properties Did you get up to owning?

Landon Harris:

I had about four properties total, and trying to do you know, deal with all of them at the same time. And, you know, we didn't have manager so I was the manager. That's a headache. You get a phone call in the middle of the night. Hey, my toilets busted. Let's turn the water off, you know, you know, you just didn't want to deal with those kinds of things. So yeah, we had about four I think total of that.

Neil Henderson:

Do it yourself landlord, obviously. Yes. Yes. And were they all there? And were they nearby? Were they there? Obviously in the Atlanta market? Where you live? Yeah,

Landon Harris:

they were all relatively close. You know, and I say relatively close. 45 minutes. It's close. Atlanta area. So, you know, we had a few in, in our local area that we were working with, but yeah, one or two were a little bit getting to the point where it's just it's not worth the drive.

Neil Henderson:

Yeah.

Landon Harris:

What sort of price point are we talking about here? So people got I mean, this is back in 2010. When it seems like everything was probably on sale. Everything was Yes. So, you know, these houses were, you know, roughly around 120. And at that time, especially when the economy was on the floor, I think everybody was losing your shirt at that point. So, you know, with all of those rentals, you know, you're probably averaging about 12 $100 a month, you know, with income and sometimes If you had a roof that's leaking, you got to replace that or a furnace is going, you know, you got to replace that. So sometimes you need to make that to put more into the house and it was actually getting to the point where is worth. So.

Neil Henderson:

So you one point you you were cash flowing 1200 a month all across the four properties.

Landon Harris:

Would that was per property per property.

Neil Henderson:

You were cash flowing 12 $100 a month per property.

Landon Harris:

No, we not after we have

Teria Harris:

those four, like, yeah, across all four. So more like 400

Unknown Speaker:

right property. Okay,

Unknown Speaker:

that's still bro?

Neil Henderson:

Yeah. Right. Yeah, it is great. But they're all those months where I have, we invest long distance, and I've got a property manager. And, you know, it's all great until the property manager calls you up and said, Hey, we had a plumbing problem. And it leaked, and it was 12 $100 fix. And you know what? Well, you know, there went eight months, you know, well, you know, six months cash flow on that pretty well, not quite that five months cash flow on that property, you know, and it's just gone. Just always kind of hope that you're not going to have something worse. Or right now, you know, a lot of people are dealing with tenants who are unemployed, and they're not able to evict them. And you know, luckily knock on wood. I haven't had that issue. But so you transitioned into flipping properties, because you're like, you know, this rental property stuff is just not fun. And talk to me a little bit about what you where you were, as far as flipping properties.

Landon Harris:

So once we got to a point of, you know, realizing that I guess, rentals were just not quite the avenue, we wanted to go in, switched into flipping a couple houses. And, you know, with flipping houses, it's great, because you mean, you get your money back? Me, I will say immediately, but in a short, short period of time, we we had gotten to, I guess two projects in and by the second project of being, you know, now you're being the GC and you're having to get all everybody put together, you know, and, and budgets, you know, running into budget issues, it started to look a little bit that it was taking up too much capital too much time. And, you know, when you're if you're dealing with a hard money lender, you know, it gets even a little tougher. So you have to really Yeah, he had to really start taking a look at all the angles in that. But we did that for about two, two and a half years. And then transitioned.

Neil Henderson:

So you went from you went from not so passive, do it yourself landlord rental property to an even less Passive House flipping. Did you both have w two jobs at the time?

Teria Harris:

Yes,

Neil Henderson:

yes. And you did. And you still have w two jobs?

Teria Harris:

Yes. Currently. he's retiring this summer.

Unknown Speaker:

Yes. Congratulations.

Teria Harris:

Yeah. Still, we still maintain WTO. That's right. Yeah.

Neil Henderson:

Yeah. And that's the other issue with with rental property as well is that it's it gets really, really hard to buy rental property without a W two income in the family. Once you once you sort of go off and now you're an entrepreneur, I know from experience, the lenders kind of you know, they go, huh, you know, suddenly the rates aren't quite so good. Yeah, don't call us we'll call you. Correct. When did the aha moment happen for you when it comes to raw land investing.

Teria Harris:

So for us, it was after mailing, you know, mailing offer letters and trying to, you know, get more properties to purchase to flip land and listen to podcast that mark Podolski was on and he came home. And he's like, I have listened to it. Like, it was like the holy grail for him. He's like, this is it. And so I was like, Okay, I'll listen to it. And it was a couple days, I dragged my feet, some like, aha, right. And so finally, I listened to it. And just the concept was simple. It was easy to understand. So I told him, he was waiting for us to kind of discuss, would we, you know, a go or no, go and I'm like, yeah, if you don't do it, I will. So we I'm all in on this. And so within what a week or two, we had signed up for training and and, and that kind of is how we skyrocket into this business.

Neil Henderson:

Not sure. So let's talk money to get that first land deal. How much money to take you to buy that first land deal. And let's, let's keep the education part out of it for now.

Teria Harris:

Our first one was probably about 12 $100.

Landon Harris:

Correct. And that was that was 10 properties.

Teria Harris:

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah, that was our first but then that was 14,000 correct?

Landon Harris:

Well, yeah, okay, after you add all in, so we're looking at about 14,000. Our first deal now that was, we bought 10 properties all at one time off of one mailing. And it, it kind of worked out. You know, with most properties, you're averaging about $1,000 per per cost, purchase the property. Now, usually when we sell them, we'll sell them and 3x 4x nine, or 4x, what we get.

Neil Henderson:

So I just want to make sure I understand a parcel of land, you're buying a parcel of land for about 1200. apiece, yeah,

Teria Harris:

depending upon the area, you're in some areas will cost more the area we started in. I think our first parcel was either 12 or 1400. Okay, this woman just happened to have 10 she wanted. So we bought all 10 of them. Correct for has just bought one, it just would have been 14 $100 for that one part. Okay.

Neil Henderson:

All right. So you bought that you bought bought those 10 parcels for about $14,000. Okay. And then do you recall kind of a general figure about what marketing costs you at that point?

Teria Harris:

At that point, we were doing it ourselves. So we literally were just on Facebook, posting our own Facebook ads. So marketing, I mean, if we say $100, if you want to include like our time and labor, you know, it was relatively low back then, because it was just a gotcha call. Let's

Neil Henderson:

call it, you know, 250.

Teria Harris:

Exactly. Yeah.

Landon Harris:

I mean, I wouldn't say have been in more than $200, though, you know, we spent with any kind of marketing that we did at that point.

Neil Henderson:

Gotcha. And how did you how did you find the deal? She she saw some of your marketing on Facebook?

Teria Harris:

No, in terms of purchasing we mail, so we just mail to the owners of the land in a specific area, and we make them an offer to purchase their land. And so they just kind of respond back, either via phone, email, or sometimes they fax us back the offer letter sign,

Landon Harris:

right. And then when we sold it, I mean, or anonymous, hold on.

Neil Henderson:

So you have not sold those properties yet.

Unknown Speaker:

We have Oh, yeah. No.

Teria Harris:

You hadn't asked about the sold yet?

Neil Henderson:

No, it's fine. We've just had Mark Podolski on the show. Although the episode at this point hasn't aired yet, it will be probably up in a couple of weeks. So for people who maybe have not heard that episode, talk to sort of about what it is you're looking for, in with raw with a potential, you know, piece of raw land, and how it is that you're talking to the seller into selling to you? Sure.

Teria Harris:

So for us, we have an area that we want to focus on. So Landon does a lot of our county research, what areas that we feel we can flop you know, find buyers in, in the beginning, it's like we didn't have a buyer's list, we didn't really know demand at that point. So you just kind of pick an area you think you connect with, and you can afford to buy the property in that area. And we we mail and believe it or not a lot of these owners of the property, they've never been to the property, you know, they've owned it, or you know, someone's passed it down to them. And oftentimes, they have no need or use of it. And so they call us back, and they're like, Hey, I received your offer, sometimes it's a negotiation where they feel their property is worth more and, and so from there, we go into like a due diligence period, where we do a little bit more digging, you know, making sure that the title is clean and things like that No back taxes. So oftentimes, it's not really us convincing them to sell it. And as much as they're wanting to get rid of it, we've just presented an offer that they like,

Landon Harris:

right, most of the properties that we work with don't have a choice. So it makes it a lot easier to purchase properties without any kind of issues that you're gonna have somebody overlooking the properties that are going to, you know, just cause you issues, even when you go to sell it.

Neil Henderson:

So you guys are skipping straight to, you know, hey, we'd like to buy your land. Here's an offer right off the bat, correct? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker:

All right.

Teria Harris:

There's there's money associated money in the offer right there when they get it.

Neil Henderson:

Right. And how are you coming up with that initial offer price?

Landon Harris:

So we and that's where we do a lot of research. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, we're getting our comps based on other properties that have sold in the area. There's a number of websites out there that you know, they are giving you values of kind of what properties are selling and generally we try to always for extra money, so we just divide by four, I'm sick, I'm sad to it. And that becomes the offer and why

Neil Henderson:

Gotcha. And so you're writing them up and you're, you're writing them say, Hey, you know, we're willing to buy your property for, you know, one quarter of what, you know, the comps are saying that you could potentially sell it for, right? And that's your initial, that's your initial offer, and is there, you know, and sometimes there's a negotiation or like, now I want a little bit more for it.

Landon Harris:

Right, and you will have that, and we have had that, I'd probably say, two thirds of the offers that we get back, somebody wants to negotiate. But you know, you're talking about 100 bucks. And maybe that's the difference of what we're negotiating. So the negotiation process isn't really too difficult. It just becomes How much do you really want to spend for a property?

Neil Henderson:

Gotcha. And so, you know, the devils in the details, you've, you've got this cash offer, as soon as a cash offer, we're going to buy your land for 14 $100. Are there any other terms is just cash, cash offer

Landon Harris:

straight cash, and then you know, like, if they have some back taxes, sometimes we'll take on those back taxes, but we back out how much we're actually purchasing the property for. So, you know, they're in trouble with, you know, with taxes, we'll assume those taxes sometimes if it's, if it's, you know, matching the value of what we're offering our offer price, and we'll take that on, but outside of that, yeah, not myself.

Neil Henderson:

And then you mentioned due diligence. So you know, I mean, when you're dealing with direct to seller, especially with real estate, let's say I'm buying a rental property, and a lot of times you'll say, Hey, here's my offer. Now, here are the contingencies. In case we discover that, you know, it's it's termite written, or, you know, got mold issues or asbestos, whatever, what sort of due diligence, you mentioned at what sort of due diligence and contingencies Are you including in your offer?

Teria Harris:

So in the offer, we we do put, you know, this offer is based on, you know, in the fine print, we do put, you know, it's based on no back taxes, no encumbrances and things like that No liens on the property. So during our due diligence, really, the only thing that we've really run into are back taxes, the occasional issue of you really can't sell it, you know, it's your mom's property, you know, you're not authorized to sell it. So we'll run into that. But for the most part, that's pretty much it in anything else is pretty minor, like every now and then we'll send our photographer out if we're doing due diligence in the new area, and he'll say, oh, gosh, there's there's trash on the property, you know, or, you know, there's whatever. And so, you know, we oftentimes will leverage that, you know, hey, well, we wanted to offer you this, but now we have to go do some cleaning up. So now here is our offer.

Landon Harris:

Right? And you'd like you know, like Teria said there's, there's sometimes issues with the title, if they're minor issues that we can fix Sure, we'll fix it and get that worked out. But sometimes you're not going to get that clean title. And those are sometimes just properties we just have to walk away from. We don't want any issues running into titles. But and also location. That's, that's also important. So sometimes, the location of a specific property, even though we mailed a certain area, may have some issues on it. You just want to make sure that the location of the property is correct. And that it's, you know, nothing major outside of that.

Neil Henderson:

Gotcha. How far away are most of the what's the area that you're targeting? How far away is it?

Landon Harris:

From where we are currently, or just

Neil Henderson:

just in general? Just you don't have to tell me exactly where it is?

Landon Harris:

No, it's okay. It's okay. So we have properties literally, all the way on the west coast. I mean, we're in Georgia, and we've got properties in Oregon, Texas, and Mexico, Colorado. So Florida. Yeah.

Teria Harris:

I don't own any property, any land property in Georgia,

Landon Harris:

as well, but yeah, so most of the properties that we actually look for sometimes are not even local.

Neil Henderson:

Alright, so let's talk about that first property, first 10th set of 10 properties that you bought, he bought it for about $14,000. Now, what do you do with it?

Teria Harris:

Yeah, market those properties. Back then we really just had Facebook and maybe Craigslist. And since then, obviously, we have a few more platforms that we're on, but we market it and we hope that it you know, attract someone. And typically if we post an ad on Facebook, we get responses and people inquiring about the property. And so from there, we just engage in conversation, see if it's something they that they're looking for, and then hopefully we sell it to them. Right, right now,

Landon Harris:

you know, on our first, our first deal that we really worked out was actually wholesale. So wholesaling the property to another investor. And actually, I want to say, first six, we ended up wholesaling to other land investors that were in that area looking for properties before we actually sold, I would say, buyer, you know, resident of regular residential buyer, actually,

Neil Henderson:

with a wholesale, you're basically just flipping the contract to another land investor, correct?

Landon Harris:

No, most of the time will at least make half or will double our money, I would say we at least double our money on a wholesale, as opposed to, you know, just Joe Blow, we're looking to buy the property most time, that's about three to 4x.

Neil Henderson:

So on a typical deal, how are you structuring the sale.

Landon Harris:

So with most of our buyers, we are working with me, they just assume a note, a lot of people will put a down payment, you know, it could be something smallest, like $300. And then, you know, we'll put them on a five year plan to pay off the property at, you know, $150 a month or $200 a month. And, you know, it, we that's pretty much it, I mean, with we have a contract, it's you know, been through an attorney and everything but we have a contract, they you know, have to follow through all the guidelines on it, you know, we don't allow them to live on the property until they are actually have purchased it and paid it all the way off. But we actually let them move on to it. Okay, so it's so it's, you know, they've got, they put a down payment, and they can't live, they can't do anything, they can't live on the property and they can't build a structure on the property until it's paid for.

Teria Harris:

Right now they're working camp, you know, if they want to go do recreational things like that, sometimes if someone has paid it off, maybe halfway, and we see like, you know, they're, they build up a good relationship with us, because we're financing these people, they sign a promissory note, and they sign a land purchase contract, but we're financing them with no credit checks or anything. So it's really kind of a trust thing we're trying to establish. So if they've paid for, you know, half or a little more than half off, then sometimes we begin to relax, you know, what we will and won't allow, but for the most part, you can't just buy it and go squat on it. Right? So

Neil Henderson:

I bought I bought spot of land for $300 downpayment, and I'm going to go build a house on it.

Teria Harris:

Yes, right. Not gonna happen. Yeah,

Neil Henderson:

gotcha, gotcha. And is the land typically, are you typically targeting land that's in a residential area? Or are you more out in the country? You know, you talked about people camping and things like that? Is there a type of land that you're looking for? Love?

Landon Harris:

Yeah, yeah, we look for both, because there's some properties, we'll say Florida. I mean, most of those are residential properties. I mean, they have power that water and connections already ready paved roads and everything. But then, you know, we have those other properties out in the middle of their mountain properties. Well, there's not a lot of power out there water on there. But you know, people that way. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker:

Love that. Yeah, we

Teria Harris:

tried to target both. You want some land, you know, build your dream home on when you retire in Florida, or if you just want to go completely off grid, you know, solar and septic, and all of that, we have that for you as well.

Neil Henderson:

Gotcha. So you're typically you're getting a large part of your initial downpayment back with their down payment, which is great. And then you're structuring, typically a monthly payout over what's the term thought you said normally five years?

Landon Harris:

Yeah, yeah, average is five years, and most of the time they've paid off the property within the first or paid what our initial investment back end within the first year. So, you know, by that time, you know, we're just making money on top of, you know, our initial investment at that point. Gotcha.

Neil Henderson:

And how many notes would you say you're holding right now?

Teria Harris:

We have about 40 notes right now.

Landon Harris:

Yeah. Yeah, it's about 40 notes. And most of them, you know, they range you know, they could be from $100, all the way up to five, six, something Central. Yeah. And so it just adds up at a certain point.

Neil Henderson:

Gotcha. All right. So it sounds kind of sounds a little bit like an accounting nightmare to me. How do you how do you make it not?

Teria Harris:

We have bookkeepers. Yes. We don't do it ourselves. Yeah, it would be a nightmare if we tried to do it ourselves. So we have people who take care of all that who understand the land business and how all that works. I don't speak like you know, accounting ease, but they do. And they pretty much keep us on track. And we don't charge interest. I know that's another thing that kind of makes it easier to track and balance because there are no interest charges. So they're responsible for the depreciation of the land and all that other stuff. They are bookkeepers do that.

Landon Harris:

Yeah. There's no issues, governmental issues, you got to get lawsuits coming against you. From the government with it. makes it a lot easier. Yeah. I

Neil Henderson:

mean, you basically just someone just, it's it's a straight promissory note 0% interest, here's how long it's gonna take you to pay it off. Correct. Ideally, you're not dealing with any of the Dodd Frank or anything like that.

Unknown Speaker:

Exactly. No, yeah, no,

Landon Harris:

we definitely want to avoid that.we keep

Teria Harris:

it simple. We have a CH we have a a CH company that just automatically deduct. So when they sign up with us part of their contract is they allow us to automatically deduct from their checking account. So it's all managed and process without without our intervention until someone is late. Right.

Neil Henderson:

Gotcha. All right. Great, great segue what happens when someone's late.

Landon Harris:

So actually, that one's actually easy, you know, we we give them a grace period, you know, the late fees that you pay, but after, if you haven't paid on the second month, we reclaim the land. And at that point, for the most part, this is the part that I've kind of find the most interesting part about this business is you can have somebody pay on it for six, seven years, or excuse me, six, seven months. And, you know, they ghost you for a few months, well, they've already put in about a few $1,000 into it, and they ghost you, we'll just resell it. And we keep moving. So basically, you end up making more money on it than you actually put into it in the first place. So or even that you were expecting. So yeah, the foreclosure process

Teria Harris:

is simple. We send them a certified letter, you've been foreclosed. Right? That's it.

Neil Henderson:

Gotcha. And so you still hold the you hold the title to the land until they've paid it off? Right?

Teria Harris:

Absolutely, the deed stays in our name until it is fully paid off.

Landon Harris:

Now, like the plan is more of like buying a car. I mean, when you when you buy a car, you pan to note and until in most people finance cars, but you know, when you get done, you know paying off the property or the car, you get your title, land, same way, you know, they they get the deed at the end of paying off their property.

Neil Henderson:

Okay, so we've already established that you are, you're not having to do the bookkeeping. What sort of, I guess, let's break down these two, let's talk about time, the amount of time it takes to acquire and find a deal. And then the amount of time that it's taking to manage the notes.

Teria Harris:

We mail every week, and we mail out anywhere between 250 to 300 offers a week, our response rate is typically 3%. And our goal to purchase is 1%. We have a acquisitions manager. So as deals come in, she she gets them, and she works them all the way through, and she'll reach out to Landon, if she has any questions or you know, if there's some negotiation that goes through. So we don't do anything, when that doesn't cost us any time we kind of delegated that out. And in terms of her time, I'm not sure how long she takes, you

Landon Harris:

know, I think in the beginning, we originally we were spending about 10 hours, maybe 14 hours a week, between the two of us. We've gotten it now because we've automated and delegated so many components of our business out, we probably spend maybe an hour a day, maybe, maybe less, that it's it allowed a lot of freedom, you know, in time to be able to, you know, spend time with her family and you know, with each other and just kind of do some things we weren't able to do before. So that's great.

Neil Henderson:

And then how did you I you obviously you you paid for a course you paid for some some knowledge with Mark Podolski, the land geeks thing. What was the what what do you think the key piece of knowledge that you learned from there that allowed you to be successful there,

Teria Harris:

I'll give mine and you can give yours. I think for mine, it was don't try and reinvent the wheel. Like they show you a phenomenal system and they show you all the processes that you need. And if you follow the model, it works. So for us it was trying to restrain ourselves from wait but we can do this better or you know this, this should be different and just following the process until it works. And then you can make your own tweaks right and make it your own but just not trying to reinvent the wheel.

Landon Harris:

Right. I think you know, the part that I took away the most was learning to delegate and Yet, you know, we use a lot of virtual assistants to do a lot of our a lot of the tasks in, we teach them, we teach them how to do it and what we want them to do in our business. So I think, you know, learning to delegate and be able to have a, basically a team of people to do basically what we were doing for ourselves. That's been the easiest part. And, to me, one of the most beneficial things that we've learned,

Neil Henderson:

those are two great answers, and I can't agree more with the learning to delegate is a lot harder than it sounds. Yes, it is. Because you can, you can waste a lot of time and a lot of money, sending somebody off to do something and go, Okay, well, they're gonna take care of it, and then it comes back and you're like, that's not what I told you to do. You know, that's no, that's

crap. That's

not you know, that's not what I wanted. So do you have any kind of systems anything like that, that you use to teach your VA? Yes,

Teria Harris:

we do. So, as you know, we started off doing everything ourselves, right. So what we did, we started recording what we would do. And so as I would go in, I'm recording everything, I'm talking through the steps and why I'm doing certain things. And so when we bring on new people, we send them the video, so watch the video, and then we sit down and walk them through it live as well. But they always have that recording that they can go back to where we were actually doing the process or doing the tasks

Landon Harris:

that take you right, yeah, that's been our best way. And, you know, help help them understand what we want them to do for our business. Yeah. And

Neil Henderson:

is there a website that you use? Or is there a screen recording software?

Landon Harris:

Yeah, loom is calm has been very good for us. You know, we in, you know, we keep a lot of things in air table, that's been a really good platform for us to kind of keep all of our links in organized everything that we're using. So I use loom in combination with Trello right now,

Neil Henderson:

which is probably part of how you're using air table, where I'll just kind of create, I'll have like a process that I'm trying to document. You know, here's how you do this. And I'll record a video and it's got in this step. It's got a link to that video, and they can look

Unknown Speaker:

exactly, yes. Yep.

Unknown Speaker:

No, it's it's magic. It's made

Unknown Speaker:

it is. It is great. It's a bit yeah,

Teria Harris:

we use Trello as well, for acquisitions. So it's, it's perfect. We love it, right?

Neil Henderson:

Yep. Just I know the answer this you buy in? You're living in Atlanta, Georgia, and you are you're investing all over the country? How does that work? How do you how do you avoid the you know, the problems of you know, you've probably never have set foot on most of these pieces of land, correct?

Landon Harris:

Correct? not correct. That's correct. All right. So

Neil Henderson:

how are you? How are you navigating? How do you avoiding buying a Greenfield, you know, something, that's how to, you know, not buying something that, you know, is just off the land of in Nevada, where they used to test nukes, you know, and it's irradiated.

Landon Harris:

So that's where the due diligence comes into heavy due diligence. And when I say that, we we go to we look at Google Maps, a lot of times google maps can show you a Google Earth scene show you that kind of stuff, we also take a look at, you know, the county research that they've done, and a lot of times the county information is pretty good, but you kind of have to kind of dig a little deeper. And then we have, you know, photographer's that go out to these properties, you know, you can get a couple of photos, and you can tell exactly what's going on with that property with that area, what it's like, you know, and they can send you photos of even the towns that are close by and roads that are out that way. So you kind of really have a understanding of the lay of the land. Once you've gotten I've gotten with, you know, all three of these pieces put together. But it makes it a lot easier.

Teria Harris:

I think we also that sometimes is a concern when we first go into a new County, but once you've learned the county, like you become very familiar with the properties that you're buying and the areas within that county. Correct.

Landon Harris:

And that's huge. Because we don't just hop around all over the country. I mean, we stay very centralized into just a specific area that we've kind of really studied. We understand it. I mean, it's almost like we live there been for years, and we know it,

Neil Henderson:

and then are you still doing most of the due diligence. Are you able to, or the VA is able to handle some of that.

Landon Harris:

Yeah, they handle that, you know, we let them dig and you know, they take a few days and they'll send us a report back of kind of all the details that we need. And you know, we've had a list of things that we want them to find out. But once they send that back, we get our report we can make a decision of do we want to go with this property We want to move on and pass on.

Neil Henderson:

Gotcha. All right, so final question. And this is a new one that we're asking all of our guests, if you had $50,000, that you had to invest in the next 90 days, where where would you put it? And what would be a return that you would be comfortable with?

Landon Harris:

It's good question.

Teria Harris:

That's a good question. I, I would put it to land like, I would bump up my mailings. So that would take a little bit of it might bump up, my marketing now would eat up a little bit of it, and what was left, I would try and purchase as much land as I possibly could. And from there, I definitely want to at least forex my money. So whatever I have in I want four times that amount in passive income, you know, spread out over the next four to six years.

Landon Harris:

Right. And I think, you know, with if we had that much money, we didn't start out with that much money, we didn't even come close. We started out with a little $14,000. And that was it. 50,000 gets you a ton of property. And I think we've gotten to the point. Well, not we think we've gotten to the point we are at a point like we've never not been able to sell a piece of property. We've sold every piece of property we've ever bought, and I don't see it as stopping. So it's one of those things, you know, if you had 50,000? Yeah, we just lay in and get as much property as we could.

Neil Henderson:

Gotcha. What do you typically targeting? You know, what is the average purchase price that you guys are dealing with? Or, like a range?

Teria Harris:

So it depends on the area. So in our Oregon properties, it's anywhere from 35 to 40 $500, depending upon, you know, are there trees, and you know, they're power close by etc. Texas is

Landon Harris:

Yeah, Texas, you might get, you know, property for 1500. You know, you know, and that's pretty much our range. I mean, occasionally you'll get those, you got it really, really low. I mean, you got this property for like $100. Or you may step up and you know, we've we've purchased some properties for 12,000. And those properties a little bit bigger, a little bit nicer, a little bit. And, you know, there's a lot more that goes into those type of properties, but

Teria Harris:

the average will be about average 2020 520 500 is better than average. Okay.

Neil Henderson:

Well, Landon interior Harris, thank you so much for sharing with us today. If any of our listeners want to reach out to you and find out more about you and what you're up to what would be the best way for them to do that.

Teria Harris:

They could go to our website, it's Creekside developments with an s.com.

Neil Henderson:

And we'll put all that in the show notes.

Unknown Speaker:

Awesome. Alright,

Neil Henderson:

thanks again for sharing today. You have a great one. Okay, that was Landon and Teria Harris from Creekside developments.com I highly recommend that you guys go and check them out. If you get a chance, those links and everything we talked about will be in the show notes, but such a nice couple and we really, really enjoyed my conversation with them. And raw land investing is always one of those shiny objects that I have to kind of force myself to not you know, go whew especially after list, you know, talking to people like Landon Teria and Mark Podolski her who are, you know, doing such a great job of it, so, okay, so, money they took, it took them about $14,000 to get into their first plot of land, maybe pump that up by another $500 that they had to spend on marketing and things like that. And that's, and that's on the high side, they bought 10 plots of land for about $14.14 $100 apiece, so raw land can be purchased pretty inexpensively. Now, again, I think you've got some other expenses, you know, and we talked about it a little bit there, we didn't get into huge detail. But you know, you're you're paying VA is and and you're paying for marketing, but don't get the impression that that's a huge amount. So that's money time. You know, they said when they first started out, they were sending about 250 to 300 offers a week out via mail, and they're getting about a 3% response rate is what they expect. And they usually expect about 1% purchase to come out of those. And they said it was about 10 to 14 hours in the beginning. But now they said it's down to about one hour a day. So seven hours a week. distance. You know, this is a this is something that you can do from almost anywhere in the world. You might have a little bit of challenge if you were living in Thailand and trying to do it here in the States. But clearly, the system they work with systems of trying to to delegate and hand that off to people so that they could do it. Knowledge, they do things to great answers. Don't try and reinvent the wheel. That's so often, you know, when you start learning from another real estate investor and you're like, that is what I want to do. That's one of the great things about real estate investing is it's repeatable. And you can learn from the way that they do it. And, and you don't need to, especially in the beginning, when you don't know what you don't know, just do what they tell you. You know, don't try and reinvent the wheel trust the process. And the other is learn to delegate you know, that is something I'm struggling with a lot a lot right now. It's, it's a whole nother skill set. But it is it will few things will supercharge your income more than getting to the point where you can delegate those 10 to $15 an hour jobs so that you can focus on making $500 an hour and and they talked about some of the tools they use loom air table Trello and I highly recommend you check that out. Alright, once again, that was Landon and Teria Harris, from Creekside developments calm, and we thank them for their time. I'm Neil Henderson. We're doing this all again next week. Let's hit the road. Hey, before you go, if you liked the show, we would be delighted if you'd head over to pod chaser and leave us an honest review. And do let us know why you liked the show how long you've been listening, and in particular what you find really useful or entertaining. And let us know if there's anything you think we should change. Also, if you have specific questions about real estate investing, especially self storage or short term rentals, shoot us an email at info at road the family freedom.com and we'll be happy to answer your question on the show. We might even turn it into an entire episode. Thanks for listening. We're doing this all again next week. Until then, safe travels on your road to financial freedom.

About the author, Neil

Neil Henderson is the co-host of The Road to Family Freedom, a self-storage investor, and avowed proponent of short-term rental house hacking. He founded The Road to Family Freedom to guide busy parents to financial freedom through passive real estate investing.