Diving into the First Real Estate Asset: LAND! with Brent Bowers, Ep 66

Today's guest is Brent Bowers, he is the Owner of Land Sharks. He is also an investor and coach with a focus on buying and selling vacant land. In a short period of time, Brent was able to expand his business, hire a team, and (most importantly) spend quality time with his family while still working hard and helping others.  While Brent invests in many different types of real estate, his favorite investment strategy deals with buying and selling vacant land, and he enjoys sharing his expertise in this area with his coaching clients. 

In this episode, Brent explains his journey from military service to real estate success. He emphasizes the value of acting now rather than waiting for the right opportunity that may never come.  

He explains how investing in land differs from buying conventional real estate, offering quick returns, less maintenance, and a unique investment strategy. He offers advice on locating discounted land, creating clever offers, and utilizing seller financing for profitable real estate opportunities. Stay tuned!

Episode Topics
[01:26]  Meet our guest, Brent Bowers
[02:04 ] From Soldier to Real Estate Success
[07:31]   Investing in Land vs. Single-Family or Multifamily Homes
[18:33]   Unlocking Profit in Undervalued Land
[32:37]   Maximizing Profits Through Creative Real Estate Strategies
[36:50]  What is one red flag every investor should look out for?
[37:44]   What is a myth about the real estate business?
[38:54]   Connecting to Brent

Notable Quotes

• "Timing is never right for anything you're doing in life. I just say, just fricking do it." - Brent Bowers
• "There is no perfect time. Usually, the sooner, the better." - Tim Little
• That rental property, I literally sold it in 2019, which was too soon. I held it from 2007 to 2019. Never ever made a penny on that house." - Brent Bowers
• "We have a strategy to buy buildings with the cash flow because of buildings, the IRS wrote that tax code to allow you to depreciate buildings and houses." - Brent Bowers

Connect with Brent Bowers

• LinkedIn: Brent Bowers
• Website: TheLandSharks.com 
• Podcast: wholesaling-inc

 Resources:
Michalowicz's book, Profit First
https://www.myfax.com/ 
https://www.samcart.com/

👉 Connect with Tim

• Linkedin: Tim Little
• Instagram: @tim_at_zana
• Email: tim@zanainvestments.com
• Visit www.ZANAinvestments.com for more info on Tim and how you can passively invest in multifamily real estate
• Get your Passive Investor's Cheat Sheet FREE

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Transcript

Ep 66 - Brent Bowers (audio)

[00:00:00] Brent Bowers: I was extremely intentional about it. And that's what I see. A lot of veterans make that mistake. The army is the, or the military is the only thing they have. They're working on getting all these degrees, which is great. But why not have that second side hustle, like you say, Tim, like investing passively into a multifamily project, or maybe buying that fourplex with your VA loan and renting out all of them? That's a lot of hassle. 

[00:01:04] Tim Little: Hello everyone and welcome to the journey to multifamily millions I'm your host, founder, and CEO of ZANA Investments, Tim Little. And on today's show, we have with us Brent Bowers. Brent is the owner of Landsharks. He is an investor and coach with a focus on buying and selling vacant land.  In a short period of time, Brent was able to expand his business, hire a team, and most importantly, spend quality time with his family while still working hard and helping others. While Brent invests in many different types of real estate, his favorite investment strategy deals with buying and selling vacant land. And he enjoys sharing his expertise in this area with his coaching clients. Brent, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:47] Brent Bowers: Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me. Good. Good to be here. Finally. I know we scheduled this a long time ago. 

[00:01:53] Tim Little: I know things happen. I think the last thing that happened was a hurricane, so I can't be blamed too much for that, but I appreciate you making it happen.

[00:02:02] Brent Bowers: Quite all right. Yeah, man. 

[00:02:04] Tim Little: Good to see you. All right. So I gave everyone a high-level overview of your background, but on this show, we really like to get into the details of how you got started on your journey. So please take us back to the beginning and tell us how you got to where you are today. 

[00:02:19] Brent Bowers: Yeah. Started out in 2007. Got my real estate license, and bought that first rental. I had actually had a lawn business before that and pretty much walked away from all of it and moved to the coast and set out to, start buying and selling. Real estate and also investing. So I had that first rental house and 2009 happened for me. It was pretty rough. So I pretty much had to call my landlord and say, Hey, I can't afford next month, so I got to move out. And here I went from business owner to real estate agent, to landlord myself, to, I can't pay my rent. So I needed a reset. My grandpa was like, just go join the military and go back to college and reset and just, recalibrate. So I tried to join the Air Force. They weren't interested in taking me. So luckily that recruiter said, go next door to the army. They'll take anybody. So I'm coachable and I did. I did that. And a couple of months later, I'm in basic training. Got through that and got through A. I. T. and Fort Gordon as a signal soldier and twenty-five uniform for anybody that remembers what that is. And then shortly after I moved to Germany with my wife and my dog and was deployed about two months after that and was on schedule for back-to-back combat deployment. It was a quick eight and a half years but I'll tell you, raising a family for me and always being gone, I just needed to figure out a way out. So I found real estate again and ultimately turned into land investing, land flipping, and land passive income. And that allowed me the safety net, the ability to get out of the military because the army was really good to me. I got to E5 sergeant pretty quickly, and then they did something called the active duty green to gold program with me. I was an active duty soldier going to college for 21 months, and I became, I made it to first lieutenant, and then I got the heck out. 

[00:04:13] Tim Little: All right. No, that's an awesome story. And yeah, like for people who don't know green to Gold is an amazing program, right? Getting paid to go to college is something most people only dream about. And the military is one of the few places where I've actually seen it happen and not just You know, green to gold, but also, there's other programs for officers as well. When they, once they get a little more senior get that master's degree. And just imagine being, getting paid as a major while going to college full time. That's your job. And getting that location pay. In addition to that, it's it's pretty amazing, but I want to go back. Yeah, I guess the best way to say it is your entry into real estate. The timing wasn't that great. You 

[00:05:00] Brent Bowers: probably have time is never good. My timing is never good. Whether it be with my wife or I buy this Airbnb right before COVID-19 happens. I put a bunch of cat-like, Things like that. It always happens, if you wait long enough, if you persevere long enough, you will find the right timing because, and I'm glad you said timing because timing is never going to be right. It's never right to have a baby. Then the timing is never going to be perfect for anything you're doing in life. I just say, just fricking do it. 

[00:05:29] Tim Little: Yeah, and that's a really important point because so many people, start looking at real estate or whatever the thing is they learn so much about it, listen to podcasts, read the books and they're like, yeah but now it's not the right time. I'll just wait until the dot, whatever that is. And that time never comes. There is no perfect time. And usually, in fact, the sooner the better. That's my perception, at least. 

[00:05:57] Brent Bowers: Absolutely. And I mean that first house in 2007 that I bought, that was another one of those things. Like I had to pay with the school of hard knocks and there's no better way to learn than by doing. I amassed several many other doors, about 10 or 12 doors in that timeframe from 2007 to 2015 when I realized. Oh, my goodness. Rentals are the slowest way to wealth I've ever seen. And if I quit this army job, I'm gonna lose all my rentals because they cost me money every month. So it was once again, a learning, path of just taking action.

[00:06:32] Tim Little: Yeah. And I think that's something that, you know, here in the multifamily world that we see a lot as well, right? Whether it's, the starting point seems to often be the single-family rentals. Why? Because it has the lowest barrier to entry, right? You can get in for a lower amount of money. The learning curve is a little bit lower. But at a certain point, you do hit a cap on growth and it's harder to scale, and then you realize the expenses are, maybe greater than what you had anticipated every time. And it's so many people start to discover this and then they move on to something else, whether it's, commercial multifamily or small multifamily, or whether it's land because it's really hard to have sustainable growth within single-family rentals, unless you Build out like massive systems, and I've seen people do it, but it is not easy.

[00:07:28] Brent Bowers: Yeah, no, it's definitely not. 

[00:07:31] Tim Little: Yeah, and so I think the other interesting part of your story is, the reset, right? So how old were you when you went into the army? I was 

[00:07:40] Brent Bowers: actually 24. 

[00:07:42] Tim Little: Okay, 

[00:07:43] Brent Bowers: actually no, 21, 23, 23. 

[00:07:45] Tim Little: Yeah, so it's you weren't old by any stretch of the imagination. I remember in basic training We had a guy who was 29 years old and we called him grandpa. Yeah, just to get a little perspective On the age differences because I was 18 when I went to basic training but I think the military does have a way of giving people that opportunity to Reset, provide stability, and give you some space to figure out what to do next. And it sounds like, eight years go by and you had a lot of success in your military career, but you decided you were going to go ahead and get out. Talk to me more about that transition period, right? Yeah. That period from when you got out. Did you take any steps? Were you very intentional about it or did you kind? 

[00:08:34] Brent Bowers: of wing it? I was extremely intentional about it. And that's what I see. A lot of veterans make that mistake. The army is the, or the military is the only thing they have. They're working on getting all these degrees, which is great. But why not have that second side hustle, like you say, Tim, like investing passively into a multifamily project, or maybe buying that fourplex with your VA loan and renting out all of them? That's a lot of hassle. I'm going to, I'm going to have a lot of I'm going to have a lot of just aggravation. I'm overseas, I'm deployed. And then we have a tenant eviction or move out. You are going to have a lot of aggravation with rental properties. And you mentioned, the passive way with multifamilies, that's probably the easiest thing to do, but you've got to have money for that. So I didn't have any money in 2016. I had so much debt from these rental properties. I had to figure out a way to dig myself out and my contract was ending in 2018. And I knew that if I stayed on track, I was going to have probably four or five deployments to Afghanistan and all over the place. Within 10 years. So I found a unique strategy that no one else was talking about. Like I'm from Okeechobee, Florida. I know about the herd, the herds get slaughtered. I did not want to be part of that herd mentality. And that herd was going after the rentals and the houses and flipping houses and wholesale houses because it doesn't take any money or time or credit. That's all BS. But what I found, I was searching for answers on a podcast just like this. And I heard a guy talking about flipping vacant raw lands and he was doubling his money overnight and I was like. If half of what he's saying is true, this is the path I'm taking. So immediately I took action. I started mailing the tax delinquent list, people who were behind on their taxes, a postcard that said, Hey, my name is Brent. I'd like to buy your land in El Paso County, Colorado. Cause that's where I was stationed. If you're interested in a cash, fair-price offer, call me or text me. And I started doing land deals immediately. You're talking about a low barrier of entry. You're talking to a guy that had I was working for the army, like 13 hours a day. I was an executive officer for a Ford support company in support of an infantry battalion. So we were just busy. So I mailed this postcard out and my phone darn near melted from people calling me. So the first parcel of land I bought was for 285. Here's how embarrassing it is. I didn't have the 285, but I asked the guy, to give me a week. I'll go check out the land and I'll call you back and tell you if I'm going to buy it or not. I went and looked at the land that Saturday, and started calling real estate offices right next to the land. And one of the realtors I spoke to made me an offer for the land. Cause I was asking her like, what's the 30-day, what's the 30-day blowout price, what's the get her done now price. I need to sell this thing quickly. She's like maybe 10, 000. I was like, what I'm buying it for 285. I can sell it I didn't tell her what I was buying it for. So I think there for a time and she called me back and made an offer for 5k and could close the following week. And I was like, let's do it. And I just kept doing it and doing it before I knew it. I paid off all those credit cards. I had 20, 000 in my bank account, and I was seller financing several of them. So I was up to a couple thousand dollars a month in payments within about six months. So I was like, this is what I'm going to focus on for the next two and a half years until it's time to get out of the military. I had a very, a long runway, really. Of time, and then I did what's called the internship program. I did a 3-month internship program. So the last several months I was in the military. I wasn't even in the military. I was growing a beard selling land and just being doing that internship program. And I got out in May 2018 had a 55, 000 dollar net profit month. And I was like, okay. This is what I'm doing for the next several years. And now I teach people how to do exactly what I did. 

[00:12:27] Tim Little: Yeah, no, that's an amazing story. And I think one, I just want to point out the fact of how intentional you were, because I'm like you, I see so many folks in the military have been their entire life. And then they have nothing to fall back on. And don't get me wrong. The military has transition programs, but it's up to the individual right to set their own path. Those are just resources at your disposal. So I think it's awesome that one, not only did you have a plan and you started something that you could segue into, but you also did it with enough runway, like you said. You wouldn't be, going crazy trying to figure it out or in a rush or worried that it was smooth and that makes it low-stress. Is that accurate? Yeah, 

[00:13:16] Brent Bowers: I'll say there was stress. I was freaking out a little bit. Because eight and a half years in the military, we don't have to think about anything. It's Hey, be here at this time and wear this uniform. But now it's my God, is this all a fluke? Is this just a, is this a bubble? Am I going to fail at this? Am I just winning by accident? So I would say I pretty much stopped freaking out after the first 30 days of that internship program. So it was about, I got out in May. So what is it? March. So March is about March 2008, about two months prior to getting out. I finally relaxed a little bit. I was like, okay, this is going to be all right. We are roughly getting almost 12 to 14, 000 a month in payments from the land that I've sold on payments. This is going to last another few years. We will make it and my expenses were like 4, 500 a month at that time. So I was like, okay we're literally bringing in double the income. I can go out there and get a second job at Applebee's if I have to. 

[00:14:15] Tim Little: Yeah. And so certainly that, freaking out a little bit beforehand is so much better than. Leaving the safety and security of the military and then freaking out and being like, what now? Yeah. So 

[00:14:29] Brent Bowers: yeah, I had three kids I actually only had two at that time and a third one. Pretty much soon after. 

[00:14:36] Tim Little: No, that's awesome. So my audience is pretty savvy when it comes to investing in multifamily, but buying land is not something that has come up a lot on the show. So please tell us how investing in land differs from investing in, say, a single-family or multifamily home. 

[00:14:53] Brent Bowers: Oh, Tim, I'm so glad you asked that. So my first single-family home, I bought it in April 2007. I paid 124, 000 and I got a bank loan for a hundred percent financing. I had to jump through hoops and hoops, and now I'm committed to it. 30 years to pay this thing off. So mortgage mort means death gauge, meaning term. And then it's slowly paying down by an amortization schedule. So like, why are all these death terms like to slowly die basically what is an amortization schedule is. So I held this house. Multiple evictions every single, I feel like every two months, something would break like a water heater, water softener, water pump, blah, blah, blah, septic system to cost 15, 000 every couple of months. I was like going into debt further to keep a renter in this property and happy. And I had three evictions because I was an idiot and I was renting it out to the wrong people. That's a whole nother podcast that can tell you everything not to do. That's so let me tell you how it differs. That rental property, I literally sold it in 2019, which was too soon. I held it from 2007 to 2019. Never ever made a penny on that house. Sold it for exactly what I paid for it, almost 12 years later. But let me talk about that first piece of land. That I talked about already 285. I was profitable immediately and forever. I did a second land deal the following week. I bought it for 500 in total. And this was non-buildable land. This one I bought for 285. It was non-buildable. The second one was non-accessible. It was, what do I mean by that? It's landlocked and you don't have to start buying crappy properties. My system's completely changed. There's a way to make a lot more money a lot faster and a lot easier than what I did. But I didn't have a clue what I was up to then. I was just taking a lot of, blind faith action. But that second parcel that I bought for 500, I left that woman's house after I got the deed from her. Didn't do any title searches. None of that stuff. Like I was being stupid and I knew better. I just did.  I just didn't know what I didn't know, so I went and put an ad on Craigslist for this land, 500 down. Cause I didn't think it was that valuable. I didn't think anybody was going to really want it. But I was like, someone will give me a down payment, a monthly payment for this 500 down 400 a month. That next day I had a buyer for this land. And then I just kept doing it and doing that second parcel. I was profitable pretty much within a few days. I shouldn't say within a few days, 30 days later, but now we've changed. Up even more. We don't always have to buy this land. We can get it under contract. Let's, I let's talk about like more expensive land. I just got a piece of land under contract a couple of months ago for 335, 000. I signed my contract for 435, so I made a quick 100, 000, never had a penny into this land deal. Another one we just recently did, my mother-in-law lent me money for it. We bought it for 40, 000, we sold it for 90, 000 to a buyer with 5, 000 down and he could pay 942 a month. My mother-in-law's payment is 800 a month for 5 years. My buyer's payment is nine 42 a month for 13 and a half years. I'll, I was profitable immediately and I'll be profitable throughout the middle. And at the very end, it's going to be really nice. And what did that guy pay off sooner? He probably will. He might build something on it. That's fine. I'll get my profit even sooner. So we should make a little over a hundred, 102, 000 over the next 13 years with all the interest we'll collect. And I have not a single penny of my own money into it and nothing will ever break. On land rental properties. There's always something breaking. 

[00:18:33] Tim Little: Yeah. And I can understand someone listening to that and being like Brian, that sounds amazing, but I'm a little skeptical. Talk me through why someone would sell even a crappy piece of land for 200, 285, or even 500. What duress are they under, or what is the situation where they're willing to part with it for that little? 

[00:19:32] Brent Bowers: And you're right, Tim, they should be skeptical. I still remember being so skeptical when I heard that first guy talking about how there's no way he's doubling his money overnight. Why would someone do that? So I'll tell you why that first guy did it. He was a retired CPA. He was a couple of years behind on taxes. He was waiting for the city to allow you to be able to build on it. And he was going to like, he was basically speculating or, he was going to sell it for more. That never happened during the time he owned it. So he just got my letter. He said, you know what? I owe 285 in back taxes. It's yours for that amount. He didn't care about the money, didn't care about the land. He traded it for better for some tax work that he did many years ago. The second person that sold me for 500, her husband bought it a long time ago. Her husband worked on Wall Street. Just randomly bought the land. They never got access to it and he passed away. So she sold it to me. This person is selling me a piece of land in Tennessee right now. Just we call them the don't wanters, they, it's the right place, right time. Now we'll people always accept these offer. 99 percent of the people will absolutely throw my offer in the trash. And they might even call me to tell me how upset they are about receiving it. There's a reason, Tim. There's. There are pawn shops all over the United States, all over the country. Why do people take Rolex watches into pawn shops and get 25 cents on the dollar for it? It's because there's some type of motivation at 

[00:21:01] Tim Little: that time. Yeah, and so I guess we covered the seller now talk to me about the motivations for the buyer who is buying. This land and what is their intent with it? if this first person wasn't able to did they just not have the resources and the savvy to figure out how to use that land And what is the situation with the buyers in most of the situations where you're selling? Yeah, 

[00:21:27] Brent Bowers: I've seen a huge broad spectrum of buyers cause I've done this in Colorado and Florida and Arizona, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Utah, Tennessee. And it's, the buyers are different everywhere you go, depending on the land. So for a while there like that first buyer that bought that land for me was a real estate agent. Her office was right down the street. The second buyer bought the hunting land that was basically landlocked by state land. He just wanted to hunt on it. And then I started buying land and like a place called Costilla, Colorado. It was like the cheapest County in Colorado. I sold that land to a lot of truck drivers. It was crazy. Then we got to Florida and we started selling land to Latinos coming out of Miami that they wanted a place. To build, their house when they get away from the hustle and bustle of the city now and more expensive areas. So builders. Developers are buying this land. I just sold a lot the other day to someone who's just going to build a house one day on it. They're just tired of renting. So they're either getting the land now and then they're going to go for their construction loan. 

[00:22:29] Tim Little: Okay. Yeah, so there is a pretty wide variety of reasons why these people are buying. And I guess that makes sense based on the usability of the land, its circumstances, et cetera. I guess when, when you're targeting the folks who are selling, it sounds like it's a numbers game, right? Like with a lot of things, like you said, 99 out of a hundred will say no, but based on, that one person who says yes that's good enough to keep your business going and to make those other 99 know. Worth it. Talk to me a little bit more about your marketing and how you're sourcing these leads. So 

[00:23:15] Brent Bowers: how I'm doing it today, let's talk about what like we've evolved into from the 2016 timeframe. So I've recently evolved into this and really the past year and a half. And I actually learned it from my students. I was teaching them how to buy this cheaper land. And I started seeing some other ones like breaking outside of that little model. And they're like making fortunes. One guy did almost a million dollars. And I was like, okay, you got to show me what you're doing. So I'm now like literally the coach being coached. It is amazing to have this Landsharks community. I started looking at smaller areas and we started going in and finding the demand on Zillow, Redfin, you go to your area, let's just say it's like a, I don't know, Colorado, like Colorado Springs, Colorado you put that in Redfin, you put it, go to all filters, you go to land and you go to sold and you want to look at what's been going on in the last 30 days. And then go exit out of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and zoom out on that map. And you're really looking for like heat spots, where the land is selling, and what I'm really looking for is little cluster patterns. Like when we're sitting in our weapon system, we want to get a tight cluster. So I want to see that on Redfin or Zillow. Once I see that I'm going to micro down into that, whether I don't care if it's a neighborhood or if it's a few neighborhoods, but I want to look for similarities or patterns. And then I want to see, okay, what's happened in the last three months. What's happened in the last week? Is this consistent? Because this tells me right here. There's a demand, there's a high demand for this area and then once I figure out what the land selling for price per acre, price per square foot, depending on what size it is, I'll go and figure is okay, I want to make at least 10, 000 per parcel before if before basically if I sell or finance it, which I always make more when I sell or finance, and that's what I prefer to do because that's the passive income. That's like rentals with no repairs, but sometimes they sell cash. It happens. It happens. Once I figure that in, I fill out what's called a land offer letter, or I call it the L O l. If anybody wants a copy of that, they can go to the land sharks.com/lol land offer letter. I've been triple-split testing this land offer letter against postcards. Things that look like checks, and it's by far outperforming everything else because here's the thing, I don't wanna be on the phone all day. Marketing's detracting. The people we don't want to talk to and also attracting the people we do want to talk to. I don't want to talk to someone who wants a big bag of money for their land. That's a total waste of my time. I'm not going to follow up with them. They can either sign it and send it back or get lost. Basically, I'll mail them again in 12 weeks. Another offer, but we'd send out that LOL. And they go out every single day and I get them back via email or text message. We have an e-fax machine that costs us 9 a month, myfax.com. Sometimes they mail them to us. I just bought a piece of land for 15, 000. I had six weeks to find my buyer and I didn't find the buyer. I didn't find the buyer in time before it was time to buy the land because I was going to use the buyer's money to buy it. I was like, this is a no-brainer. I know I can sell this thing for 30, 000 all day long. They're selling for more than that. So I just finally was like, let's just buy it. And then a week later it was paid for, but I never was paid for by another buyer. I never spoke to that seller over the phone. It was all email. 

[00:26:37] Tim Little: Wow. Okay. And so I guess this is where we get into the conversation about systems, right? So break down a little further, those systems that you have in place. And I guess my first question is on those LOLs, which are, very similar to a letter of intent and offer a letter for my audience, I'm trying to make the equivalent acronym. Are you giving specific? Off offers specific to the property or are they partial? Okay. So that takes a little bit of work, right? You have to do enough research to at least know the ballpark. What exactly, what to offer on that? So what does that process look like and how are you able to? To do that, given general time constraints, I imagine you're putting in a decent amount of these offers.

[00:27:28] Brent Bowers: Yeah, that's the hardest thing is mailing enough people. So you can spray and pray or throw a bunch of spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks, but I prefer to go sniper approach. I go as small as the neighborhood level. So I go down to the neighborhood with Redfin and I click on each one of those things that have sold in the last 30 days. I want to know three things. How big is it? How much is it selling for? Whether it's price per square foot or price per acre, you can download this stuff on Redfin. I like to go this, the slower way because I want to see each one of them, especially if I'm just, I'm sitting here from my house in Florida doing this all over the country. And the third thing I want to see. One is how much does, they pay for it, how much does it sell for? Cause we're looking at sales only, not what's for sale. That's a different, that's usually a different price. Cause people ask for one thing and get something else. So how much does it sell for? How big is it? And the third thing is who's the land sales specialist, real estate agent. Who is it listed by? Who was bought by? Because those are my boots on the ground. Those are, who's going to go look at the land and verify that it's a good deal. And if I'm going to buy it or not. So once I figure that out. I just go next to the prop stream. Are you guys familiar with the prop stream? No, it's a great service. If anybody wants a seven-day free trial, just go to the landsharkslist.com. You can get a seven-day free trial, but I go to prop stream and then I put in that area and I pull all the landowners in that whole entire area. That neighborhood we're thinking micro here, real estate's micro. And then I used another program to launch these land offer letters for me. It's all done for me. So this whole process I just mentioned takes me about 15 to 20. They're just called 30 minutes because I got to take a coffee break and all that 30 minutes to do the whole thing and Pebble makes it so easy for us to do it to anybody who wants a 14-day free trial and a 50 mail credit to, to use pebble, just go to the land sharks.com forward slash C R M as in customer relationship manager. 

[00:29:30] Tim Little: No. Okay. That's really interesting. I always like learning how people do things and find these leads. So to be clear, you're only putting in offers on one, what we would call off-market deals, right? These are not advertised for sale. You're reaching out cold to these owners in order to offer them because you see either, a, as you said in the beginning, maybe they're behind on taxes, or maybe you just want to hit them up. They've owned it for a long time, whatever the case may be, but these people are not advertising it for sale. Is that right? Yeah, 

[00:30:05] Brent Bowers: most of the time not. Sometimes it is listed and they'll send the realtor that LOL and sometimes we do buy it at that price and we'll re we'll relist it this time offering terms like you can we will finance it because a lot of banks don't really finance land. So that gives me opportunities in both directions. One to buy it from the seller and the seller finances it for me. I prefer 0 percent interest and I'll give them higher payments that they like. And then on the other side of the coin, when I'm selling it, if I offer financing, I just opened my buyers pull up quite a bit and Americans want to buy American land. Heck, Europeans are buying American land, Chinese. And I'm seeing people from Canada buy American land. And then you offer seller financing. It's icing on the 

[00:30:50] Tim Little: cake. Yeah. And so that's I think a really important point that you brought up there is banks. Generally, it sounds don't want to lend on this. So what you're trying to do is more the seller financing. 

[00:31:05] Brent Bowers: Yep. Preferable. Does it always happen? No, the more expensive parcels I do, I feel like the more cash. That's available for them. 

[00:31:13] Tim Little: And what kind of terms does that seller finance? What does that usually look like? I know it can generally, 

[00:31:19] Brent Bowers: generally I get about 12 percent interest per annum. I charge a 25-a-month note service fee that kind of pays my bookkeeper and whatnot to keep everything straight. I use a system called Easy Note. tracking. com to track all the notes, and figure out who's late. It automatically charges the late fee. The money goes directly into my bank account. We have roughly 69 notes right now. So we're paid, 69 times a month. 

[00:31:43] Tim Little: Yeah. And your intent is not to own these longer than how many months. It 

[00:31:49] Brent Bowers: depends on how many I buy at one time, sometimes it's 30 days, sometimes it's a couple of weeks. I've had one parcel sitting for about, I don't know, it's almost six months now and I need to restructure, do something. And that happens if you do enough land, you're going to have some sit for a little longer. I've had one project we were actually going to develop it. I bought that with partners and put 34 townhomes on it. So we've owned that one for almost two years. That land was 1. 2 million. We purchased it from the seller. We gave him 600, 000 down. He transferred the land into our name and held a note basically for one year, zero payments, 0 percent interest for the remaining 600, 000. So you can do cool, creative stuff like that with sellers when it comes to 

[00:32:37] Tim Little: land. Yeah, and I think that's really important too that people understand, you know Just like you can get as creative as people are willing to get with you when it comes to Structuring these deals and this is true with land. It's true with multifamily. It's even true with single-family You just the limit is your imagination, I guess and as I said, whatever anyone is willing to agree to That's really interesting. I guess my one concern would be from a tax perspective. This would be a short-term capital gain is that a big tax hit for every transaction that you do? And what is your strategy to offset that? You're getting 

[00:33:17] Brent Bowers: advanced methods now. It's actually ordinary income. So it's even worse than capital gains. Depends on what tax bracket you're in. 2021, my tax bracket just shot through the roof and had a little bit of a tax burden. So now we have a strategy to buy buildings. With the cash flow because of buildings, the IRS wrote that tax code to allow you to depreciate buildings and houses. So we do what's called cost segregation. So about September, right about now, I need to start figuring it out. Okay. What's my tax burden going to be this year? And how much real estate, how many buildings I should say, do I need to buy too? Take that bill from, 100, 000 owed to maybe five or 10 because we pay in every month as well, just to be safe. But yeah I just bought a completely. So we bought a brand new house from a veteran the other day. He bought it and then he needed to change duty stations within about a year of buying it. So he would have. He would have lost money selling that house. So we bought it from him for exactly what he owed on the mortgage subject to existing financing. And I think I gave him a thousand bucks to help him with moving expenses. So I just got a 447, 000 house. The rent is just covering. The mortgage, but it's a newer remodeled house. So I don't have to worry about anything for a few years, but that 447, 000 mortgage that I just took on now, I'm the owner of the house. It's going to help me with about 40, 000 worth of taxes that I would have had to pay the IRS. 

[00:34:50] Tim Little: Yeah, and I think that's an important point. Shameless plug for passively investing in multifamily just to show that it can be part. It doesn't have to be exclusive, right? It could be part of a broader tax strategy in a situation like where you're at, where you have these taxable events and you need a way to bring down that bracket. You can do that, especially because you are investing. Those are considered investments, I would imagine. You can passively invest in multifamily, still get that same depreciation but not have to deal with the headaches. So for someone who's fully engaged, like you are, that would seem like the perfect asset to combine with your high income, but short term. Real estate strategy. So again, just a way to think of this. I know sometimes in our different asset classes, we can become very protective and say only this, only that I am not one of those types of people. You really need to look at this from a broad perspective. There might be some asset classes like land where it can be very good from a cashflow perspective, cause you're doing consistently, even if it's, flipping, but you have this other asset that is much more beneficial from a tax perspective. And so they really balance each other out. Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:36:12] Brent Bowers: I'm literally putting on my calendar right now to call my CPA because it's we should have this meeting right now because there's going to be, you are guaranteed to have to pay taxes. And here's the thing. It's It just means we're making money.

[00:36:27] Tim Little: Yeah, exactly. It's a good problem to have. All right. Hey, I think this has been some super interesting conversations. So I hope people are getting a ton of value out of this, but we do need to transition into the turbo round. All right. So I'm going to ask you three questions that I ask every guest that I have on the show. And I just want a quick, honest answer. First question. What is one red flag? Every investor should look out for. Yeah, we 

[00:36:54] Brent Bowers: just talked about it. Be prepared to pay those taxes when you start doing well. I recommend Profit First for that. Check out Mike Michalowicz's book, Profit First. 

[00:37:02] Tim Little: All right. Awesome tip there. Okay. Next one. What is a myth about this business that you would like to set straight? It, 

[00:37:10] Brent Bowers: it takes a lot of hard work to get this set up, entrepreneurs we have to be able to weather the storm. We don't always have the answers and we never will. You just have to find who does and do your best with that help and knowledge. And I think so many people are just waiting. Like we talked about this earlier. It's like for the stars to align, to do this, just get out there and do it today. You're going to get bumps and bruises and scrapes and cuts and 

[00:37:33] Tim Little: all that. Yeah, exactly. Half of success is just not quitting. And that's just as true in entrepreneurship as it is in anything else. All right. Finally, what does success look like to you? It changes every 

[00:37:48] Brent Bowers: day. Success is when, the wife, my wife is happy. We're happy together when my children are all happy when we take that time and then also winning in business, winning in physical fitness and health. I think it's like we're always out of some. We're always out of balance, but it's okay, today we're good today. We've done enough and success can be, you can look at yourself as not successful. If you keep moving that goalpost, you have to be happy when you hit those goals. 

[00:38:18] Tim Little: Yeah, absolutely agree with that.

[00:38:21] Brent Bowers: I'm sorry, Tim, but I see you've got who not how up there behind you. You've got to check out anybody that's like wants to know what the defining success is. Check out the Gap in the game by, by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. That will change your outlook on success. 

[00:38:37] Tim Little: Exactly. You got to take the wins when you get them. Don't let that stop you from, having ambition, but you got to take those wins. All right. Hey, Brent, this has been awesome. Please tell our listeners how they can get ahold of you. And if there's anything else that you'd like to share with them. Yeah, 

[00:38:54] Brent Bowers: the best way is to schedule a call. Go to the landsharks.com, thelandsharks.com. I'm on all the social media channels, Brent L Bowers. Yes, the L stands for land Brent L Bowers. But the easiest way is to go to the landsharks.com and schedule a call. 

[00:39:09] Tim Little: All right. We'll definitely have all that information in the show notes. I appreciate you coming on Brent and look forward to continuing to see you do big things on your journey to land millions. God bless Tim. All right. Take care.