Today at RealEstateAudios, we're meeting Seth Williams of RETipster.com. Seth is a big land guy and is going to give us the low down on everything from his early days in land to his biggest deals. His expertise isn't just about land and he's also going to tell us about balancing investment and family life, as well as the dilemmas we face when starting a business. He's going to walk us through different aspects of a land deal, from dealing with sellers, to attracting buyers and putting the ink on the paperwork. He's all about quality rather than quantity, and makes his investments work well for him with only 6-12 deals yearly with minimal hassle. Listen in for tips and tricks from this seasoned land investor.

Topics discussed in this episode:

How Seth got his start

Where he got his early inspiration

Why Seth chose land as his first niche

The flexibility of land investment

The risks and rewards of seller financed deals

Balancing entrepreneur dreams and family time

The importance of a diverse income

The value of letting sellers come to you

Seth's average turnover times and his longest hold

The value of fewer, higher-margin deals

Seth's crazy first year

The importance of paperwork when it comes to seller financing

Dilemmas in the land business

How Seth's biggest deal fell into his lap

How due diligence, zoning and permits figure into your land deal

Getting your marketing and paperwork to tie up during a sale

Where you can learn more tips and tricks from Seth

How Seth got his start

My story started back in I think it was 2006ish, somewhere in that range.

Where he got his early inspiration

In Rich Dad, Poor Dad he talks about real estate as an option, but he doesn’t really give a whole lot of specifics of how, like what specifically he did.

Why Seth chose land as his first niche

how you’re able to buy properties for pennies on the dollar and find highly motivated sellers...they’re actually not that hard to find for vacant land compared to other types of properties

The flexibility of land investment

I could really scale it as much as I wanted to. I could make it my life, or I could just do it on the side as a hobby.

The risks and rewards of seller financed deals

So it’s a very real thing, but what I realized was a lot of people, unless you’re actually doing credit checks and really investigating your borrower ahead of time, a lot of people can and will stop paying you.

Balancing entrepreneur dreams and family time

It’s just spending your time better and not chasing after every single motivated seller who calls you. It’s more being selective about, nope, that’s probably not going to pay out so well so I’m not going to mess with that, but this one over here looks really good so I am going to spend my time on that.

The importance of a diverse income

That’s where the real meat was. But if there was a month where nothing was happening in land, there were other sources of income I had to draw on as well.

The value of letting sellers come to you

A lot of the deals that I find these days actually come in through my buying website. People will just find me and submit their property information and make an offer that way.

Seth's average turnover times and his longest hold

I think the longest I’ve ever held a property is 15 months.

The value of fewer, higher-margin deals

They mentioned that you only probably do less than a handful of deals a year because you want to focus in on bigger margins and less work. Is that true?

…

It’s more like I can really make sure the quality is there all through the process.

Seth's crazy first year

I didn’t realize how crazy it was going to be that first year. I guess I would’ve said just be ready for a lot of time. Pretty much all your nights and weekends are going to be tied up doing this. Just be ready for that.

The importance of paperwork when it comes to seller financing

They just kind of wing it and don’t do it right and they don’t use the right documentation. I think that can work to a point, but at some point, it can come back to bite you

Dilemmas in the land business

You’re crazy if you’re not paying attention to that and realizing, oh, there’s probably a price to pay over here if I go this way just like there’s a price to pay if I go over this way. I just realized that the price to pay with not doing seller financing, in my case, I’m okay with that.

How Seth's biggest deal fell in his lap

There was a property I sold just late last year where it was the biggest ROI deal I’d ever done where I bought it for $500 and it was landlocked and it was 10 acres. The neighboring property owner within 23 hours of me listing it offered me $25,000 for it.

How due diligence, zoning and permits figure into your land deal

It could be. I guess it just depends on the property. Do you mean difficult in terms of…

PDC: Permits, county laws, restrictions.

SW: Yeah, because there are actually a few different layers of that. There’s the zoning. There’s the Planning Department, and what are the setbacks required?

Getting your marketing and paperwork to tie up during a sale

I want to confirm that from these high-level metrics it does seem to be buildable. Also, there’s a document I have whenever I sell a property where the seller basically has to read through it and say I’ve either chosen not to get a survey or I did and everything is fine. I’ve looked at this. I’ve looked at that. I’ve looked at all these things. I’m never going to come back and sue you for anything.

Where you can learn more tips and tricks from Seth

We do offer coaching through RE Tipster.

Transcription

PAUL DOCAMPO: Hi! Welcome to another show with Paul at RealEstateAudios.com, and you’re going to be listening to Seth Williams in a bit. Seith of RETipsters.com. He opened up a blog site years ago, and he is a land guy. I wanted to get him on my site because I have interviewed a land investing guru, a land investing expert, and land was my bread and butter not too long ago. So I wanted to get him on the show to talk about his business. Iif you’re not in land, I still want you to listen to this because it is a lesson about building your business the way you want it to run. Everybody in land does this whole thing that you got to get notes. You got to start having lots of notes. You got to seller finance. That is the end goal. Notes are the end-game. Seth said to hell with that, and he strictly operated on a cash-business basis only selling 6-12 properties a year. That’s how he runs his business. He doesn’t mess around with notes. He doesn’t want to worry about people not paying. He just sells it for cash, and he has a volume of 6-12 a year. It keeps him going. It builds enough for him to buy whatever he needs to buy in terms of real estate rentals. So tune into that. 

We have a lot of things going on at RealEstateAudios.com. Mainly, if you’re on my email list, I am finally putting a stake in the ground, and I am showing and teaching people how to be a copywriter, how to write ads that persuade and attract sellers, attract leads, and how to close them using the written word. I did that since I started as a real estate investor for clients, for investor care, for myself in my own businesses. So if you’re not already on my email list, go there. It’s a daily email list. I do promote things. I do give offers, and I do it in infotaining ways. If you’re not on there, go to RealEstateAudios.com and subscribe there. All right, let’s get to Seth.

PDC: So, Seth, you have your hands in a lot of different niches. You’re kind of like me. You’ve kind of spread out, tried a lot of different things, and now you’re in land. What’s the story behind Seth Williams?

SETH WILLIAMS: (0:02:14 .8) Yeah, great question. My story started back in I think it was 2006ish, somewhere in that range. I say that because that was really when I first discovered this whole general idea of financial freedom and passive income and the Rich-Dad-Poor-Dad philosophy, just stuff that in hindsight seems kind of obvious, but I think many of us, the way we were raised, we weren’t really told that. It wasn’t an obvious thing until we’re sort of spoonfed those ideas from a book like that and several others. That was when I first realized, hey, I don’t necessarily have to do this 9-to-5, W-2 career. There are lots of other ways that could be a lot more fun and a lot more profitable to make a life for myself. In Rich Dad, Poor Dad he talks about real estate as an option, but he doesn’t really give a whole lot of specifics of how, like what specifically he did. So I just took that, and I was like, I guess I’ve got to buy rental properties. I have to buy houses to flip or something. And I just spent hours and hours and hours on the MLS trying to find deals. Back in 2006, it was a lot like it is today where prices were going nuts. It was impossible to find deals on the open market that would actually cash flow, and I was just banging my head against the wall thinking how do people do this? I can’t find these deals that people are talking about, the ones that actually make money. It was really frustrating. 

(0:03:43 .3) Fast forward a couple years, I took a home-study course about this idea of buying and selling vaca