Land Investing with Mark Podolsky

In this episode, I am excited to interview Mark Podolsky, who, armed with only $3,000, gut-wrenching fear, and absolutely no real estate experience, bought his first few parcels of raw land in 2001. Today, Mark is the author of Dirt Rich, the ultimate guide to helping you build a passive income, and owner of Frontier Properties, a very reputable and successful land investing company. He is also the host of two popular podcasts, The Art of Passive Income and The Best Passive Income Model. By focusing on working smart, not hard, he has completed over 5,500 land deals with an average ROI of over 300% on cash flips, and over 1,000% on the deals he sells with financing terms.

Mark begins by giving us a little detail on how he got into land investing. He was working as an investment banker in mergers and acquisitions and had a co-worker achieving incredibly high ROI by investing in raw land. Mark couldn’t believe the numbers, so he tried it himself. After about 18 months, he was able to exceed his corporate job income and was able to quit in order to invest full-time.

I asked Mark to walk us through his investing model. He starts by going to the county treasurer in a particular area and gets the list of everyone who owes back taxes on land. He said that this advertises two things to him: the owner is not emotionally attached to the land and he is financially distressed in some way. Mark then looks at comparable sales, takes the lowest comparable sale, divides by 4, and offers that fraction to the owner of the land. Because this is cash, and better than nothing, 3-5% of the people will accept it. Once bought, Mark wants to make the property cash-flow, just like if he had a rental home, and he has a usually has guaranteed buyers in the neighbors. If they have no interest in the property, he has an extensive list of buyers and sites to sell it.

Mark talked a lot about selling to his buyer’s list, so I asked him how you build a list for land. He commented that he has a huge market for raw land and he explained some of his marketing strategies. He also employs a 90-day return or exchange and 365-day exchange program so it removes the risk for his customers. He then explained how he has automated both the front-end and back-end systems. He says he only has one hour in this business a week when he conducts his team meeting.

I asked Mark to lay out what his team looks like. He has an Acquisitions Manager who decides on a market after extensive research, gets the delinquent tax list from the county, and then who works with a guy on Fiverr, who Mark says is an “excel ninja.” He scrubs the list and uploads it to The Land Geek’s proprietary software LGPASS, which sends out direct mail offers. Then the Intake Manager takes over as the offers come back, to ensure they are actual deals, and to try to negotiate a lower selling price, in addition to the actual closing. The property due diligence is performed by a group in the Philipines associated with an American title company, and then they have ad writers for the major selling outlets like Craiglist and Facebook Marketplace. Mark also employs Virtual Assistants (VAs) to work with the Acquisition Manager handling administrative duties.

This episode is about so much more than land investing! Mark walks us through his entire process, which is such valuable information for any investor! Join us for this powerful episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast!

Notable Quotes:

“Now we are working because we want to, not because we have to.”

Mark Podolsky

“No renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents.”

Mark Podolsky

“The game that we play is can we create enough of these land notes so that our passive income exceeds our fixed expenses.”

Mark Podolsky

“Happy customers guaranteed.”

Mark Podolsky’s business philosophy

“What used to take me hours and hours, now takes me one second because of automation.”

Mark Podolsky

“You just have to show up - it is a consistency game.”

Mark Podolsky

“COVID is definitely changing the way we do business. We might not have the same success rate closing deals over the phone, but it is dwarfed by the volume of deals when you are doing it virtually.”