Chapter #3: The Assignment Play

Play number three, the assignment play. The velocity of your money determines your wealth. Robert Kiyosaki. Is it cheating? Another important question right up there with the one that began this book. In this instance, with the cheating question, you may find yourself asking it during this chapter's discussion. For the chapter ahead deals with the play which, depending on how you look at it, could be viewed as cheating. But is it? No, no, it's certainly not. If on the other hand, we turn to how the strategy will impact you personally, well, then it might be cheating. In that scenario, you'd be cheating yourself out of such things as, one, the stress of having your capital tied up in a piece of land and unavailable for deployment on other lucrative deals. Two, the agony of a long sales cycle with an end date somewhere between tomorrow and never. Three, the fun of dealing with less than serious buyers, including any who may have explanations on why the price is too high, that are more creative than any creative financing you'd ever offer. Yes, you could be cheated out of those three things above. If following this land investing play in this chapter, still, you and I can probably agree that this kind of cheating isn't a bad thing. In fact, we may want to ditch the whole cheating label. Rather than cheating, the play we're about to discuss is more like a cheat code than cheating. To be fair, the other plays in this playbook aren't counterintuitive requiring massive leaps of logic. It's only that this particular play, our third play in the playbook, is so simple and obvious that many land investors overlook it or don't see how it can be applied strategically and profitably. The play itself is called play number three, the assignment play, aka wholesaling land. What gives it the common sense feel is how the play eliminates most of the mystery on the sales side. There's usually less mystery over who your in-buyer will be. What enables this is the way the third play takes more of a B to B approach. For those who may be unfamiliar with the term B to B, it just means business to business. It's B to B in that other land investors or builders will nine times out of ten be the ones to purchase deals during this play. Knowing that, you can narrow your focus when marketing assignment deals. Assignment deals. Notice that phrase just now, assignment deals. The word assignment modifies the word deals and it makes all the difference. With assignment, the deals in play number three stop being traditional deals where there's a property that you or a deal funder owns and hopes to sell. Changing it up, the deal now becomes a business opportunity versus a specific piece of real estate. In other words, your deal is seen by the in-buyer as a business opportunity that they can purchase and then execute in order to make money. I don't want to make the assumption that you are inherently or already familiar with what an assignment actually means. So if you've been wondering if I'll cover that in the following pages, the answer is yes, absolutely. Your understanding of an assignment and how to run the assignment play will be crystal clear by the time you finish this chapter. Let me also lead by saying that an assignment is synonymous with wholesaling. So if you're familiar with what household sailors do, then this play will not be a steep learning curve for you. The in-buyer will be a fellow land investor and is thus not interested in personally doing anything with the property. You will be sourcing the deal to them for essentially a finder's fee and they will go through the hassles of finding the in-buyer and get their payday when they convert that meat on the bone to realize profits. This explains why we're referring to play number three as B to B. As a business owner, with your land business, you're selling deals in play number three to another business, a fellow land investor. In play number three, I will teach you how to wholesale land, which I call the assignment play. I call it the assignment play because you are essentially taking the purchase agreement that you have gotten under contract with an off-market landowner and you are assigning or transferring that purchase agreement to another land investor or builder for an assignment fee, which is basically a fancy way of saying a finder's fee. Benefits and drawbacks to assignment deals. As you proceed with assignment deals in play number three, you'll find that there are some definite immediate benefits and also some drawbacks to doing so. First, the benefits. An immediate benefit to this third play is its connection to household sailing. If you're coming into land investing from wholesaling houses, then you've probably done the assignment play already, with houses rather than land. You won't therefore have a steep learning curve with this play. Not a household sailor? You're still in luck on play number three. That's because the assignment play isn't complicated. When you run it, you're simply finding a deal, getting a piece of land under contract and assigning the contract to purchase it to another land investor or possibly a builder. The person you assign the contract to will pay you a fee, an assignment fee for the contract. And then what? Nope. There's no end then. At that point, once you assign the contract and get paid, you're done. That's the assignment play and its entirety, just three steps. Step one, find a property, find the off-market deal for a below-market value price. Step two, lock up a property. Find it under contract. Step three, flip the contract, assigning it to another land investor or a builder. Since it only has three steps, this play is arguably the fastest one in our playbook. That's another benefit to it. So is the lack of any out-of-pocket property acquisition costs. And the latter benefit, no out-of-pocket costs, you won't be acquiring properties. No your only acquisition will really be like a piece of paper, the contract, which gives you the right to purchase a given property. Since you're not acquiring any actual properties, you won't therefore need tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover property acquisition costs. So don't get the wrong idea however on cost. This is not some sales pitch for a no-money down strategy like you might see on some late night infomercial from the 1980s, okay? More often than not, this play will require you to lay out some money. You'll probably need to pay for your initial marketing to find deals that can be put under contract. That marketing spend may include buying the list that you'll target, paying the mailhouse for direct mailing costs, or potentially even paying a cold calling service to call your list. The beauty of this though is that marketing is your main and almost sole expense. On the assignment side, you likely won't need to spend much if any money on marketing to find other land investors interested in purchasing your contracts. Right off and you can make posts and free Facebook groups for land investors or in land forums or communities. Letting people know you have contracts to assign and then investors will reach out to you. If you decide to run this play at scale, I recommend you build marketing lists of other land investors much in the same way you pull marketing lists of property owners to target to. You can then send direct mail, text messages, or even cold call these other land investors to put yourself on their radar as an assignment investor. You may be surprised though at how few land investors are running this play within the space and it's very likely you can find all the land investors you need just by posting in free Facebook groups and communities. Once you've found such investors though, your marketing costs on this side of the play are bound to decrease. At that point you'd only be paying for marketing to find the deals to get the properties under contract. Another thing to keep in mind, so as to not be misled with this play, is the reality of speed. We've just dispelled how the play requires low money as opposed to no money. So equally relevant where speed is concerned is that fast does not mean instant. Run the assignment play and you'll find it can take approximately 30 to 45 days to complete. Not exactly an instantaneous event, you know at least compared to say calling 911, right, which is hopefully instant. And again, 911 isn't having to wait on a title company to dispatch, right? So not to throw title companies under the bus here, it's only that title companies usually take approximately 30 days to close deals. Hence the reason you'd be waiting those 30 to 45 days. You're waiting for the title report to come back and ensure that there are not any leans or judgments against the property. The reason is the other land investors don't want to pay an assignment fee or a finder's fee on a property only to find out that it has title or probate issues. To ensure the assignment play is a win-win for both of you, the industry standard and best practice is for you to receive your assignment fee only after the property makes it through title closing on the buy side. Ensuring there's clear title and that the property owner doesn't back out. The bottom line then is the land investor assignment play moves fast on your side and then slow to moderate where the title companies are concerned. This play is still a velocity play and collecting assignment fees is a much quicker exit strategy than having to deal with a 30 day title close on both the buy and sell side of a flip along with the typical 120 days or more on market. You'll be getting in and out of deals every 30 to 45 days without using your own money to buy the properties. The key with this play is volume and that you focus on high enough value properties that the assignment fees you collect allow you to stack cash and not just move from one deal to the next. One more thing to clear up so there's no confusion is the role of the title company in play number three. The role is quite simply to provide escrow services. You open escrow with the title company not the land investor you plan to assign the contract to. You then assign the deal the purchase agreement through escrow to the land investor or builder who wants to buy it from you. The land investor or builder then wires into escrow the agreed upon purchase price of the property plus your assignment fee. At the time of closing you'll provide your land investor or builder with an invoice for acquisition services. AKA your assignment fee and then when the closing occurs the title company will disperse funds to two separate parties. The purchase price or sales price of the property goes to the property owner whom you had a contract with and the assignment fee for acquisition services is disperse to you. Obviously I can't speak to the legality of practice of all 50 states so you have to see what is allowed in your markets and if the verbage or process needs to be modified for that jurisdiction but that is the overview of how it works. Speaking of payment it can often be a drawback to running this play. The issue begins with the fact that you need to make enough money from an assignment deal for it to be worth your time. That's practically a given. The thing is you're not the only land investor involved in this play. To the contrary each time you run the contract assignment play you'll need at least one other land investor or builder. They're the one you'll be assigning the contract to. Note for simplicity we're referring to whomever you assign the contract to as a land investor. That individual or group does not have to be a land investor though. That might for example be an entity like a funding company that does assignments. It might be a home builder or even a private investor or business owner from a non-REI field. Or it could just be a person who recognizes a great money making opportunity and purchasing the contract from you and reselling it. Nine times out of ten however it will be a land investor or a home builder whom you assign your contracts to. And what of that other land investor? The one whom you'd like to pay you and exchange for having the contract assigned to them? Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. Looking at it from the other person's perspective what's in it for them. The immediate answers that they, the other land investor, will get the deal you're assigning. Alright, but you and I both know this isn't the end of the story. It's the end of our involvement. Yet the other land investor's fund is just beginning. For after a deal has been assigned to them that other investor must actually do the deal. Otherwise they've essentially paid thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for a piece of paper with your signature on it. Granted your signature loan is probably worth a hefty price and I'd have no doubt that papers you've autographed for one day fetch millions at Christie's Auction House in London. But your in-buyer won't think so. Their eyes are fixed on the deal being assigned and what profit they can reap from doing it. The upside. That's another way to describe what's on the other land investor's mind. They're looking at the contract and figuratively speaking either drooling over the deal or filling sick to their stomach. Earlier in the chapter I mentioned the phrase "meet on the bone". Put enough meat on the bone and you'll have other land investors drooling. They'll eagerly purchase the contract, delighted at how much profit remains in the deal for them to realize. There is in other words still plenty of money to be made from the deal after paying your assignment fee. The reverse also holds true if there's not enough meat on the bone. This time around the other land investor will look at the deal and be sicked by the lack of upside or built in profit. Not only will the investor not want to do the deal, they may also be reluctant to consider your deals in the future. I encourage you to always take the long view when running the assignment play and when wholesaling land to other investors or builders. The majority of us signers or wholesalers are very short-sighted and they don't understand the lifetime value of a solid business to business relationship with a land investor or builder to whom they can source these contracts. Right off end, they only see the deal or transaction that is immediately in front of them and they insist on keeping too much meat, especially in the beginning with their first deal together. I strongly encourage you to do the opposite, begin your relationship by being the giver, sacrificing some equity on the first deal establishes and accelerates the trust building stage with your land investors or builders. Who would want to return to a restaurant where the portions were tiny and unfulfilling? Where land investing is concerned and the contract assignment play in particular the other land investor getting the contract must stand to gain as much or even more than you. Otherwise you're not going to find any takers, especially over the long term for your contract assignment deals. Since you're leaving enough profit in a deal for those you assign a contract to, this leads to another drawback of the contract assignment play. The next drawback is that you personally make less money than you do with other land investing plays. How much less? If we had to get specific about it, I would say that you start with looking at the planned sales price or full market value of the property in the deal being assigned. The estimated sales price or full market value is typically what assignment fees are usually based on. In that way the fees or assignments often range from as little as 5% up to 15% of planned sales price or full market value. To see those percentages in action consider a $50,000 property. Assign a property you have under contract where the other land investor you're assigned to could sell it for $50,000 and you'll likely earn $2500 to $7500 in assignment fees which represents 5% to 15% of the estimated sales price. or market value. These assignment fees certainly won't make you poorer, but there's no denying that as earnings go, the fees pale in comparison to what we seen in earlier plays where you buy the property outright, take ownership, and then resell it for full market value. Recall play number two, the boss play for instance, as we discussed in the last chapter. On that second play, we'd said that you can expect to earn at least 10,000 to 50,000 per deal. On top of that, we also noted how six-figure profits were uncommon or unrealistic either on deals with play number two. Given the differences in earnings, play number three is at a disadvantage in that regard compared with the other plays. You can of course earn six figures from running play number three. Yet your earnings are unlikely to come from a single deal unless you are sourcing million dollar properties to developers, which is another play and a future playbook. For this play in this chapter, let's just operate with the assumption you will be assigning properties and the 40,000 to 400,000 dollar market value range. You probably won't assign any deals that another land investor could then go off and sell for say two million dollars. On a two million dollar sales price, your 5% assignment fee would be a hundred thousand. But again, it's highly unlikely to happen. What's far more likely is that you need to do a high number of contracted assignment deals each year to earn six figures. Completing these deals with play number three though would involve less work than in other plays like play number two. And there'd be other benefits too. Namely, the ones noted so far in this chapter. So what's it going to be? Will you be running play number three or one of the other plays? From what we've said so far, it may appear though you need to choose. Thankfully this is not the case. You do not have to choose. Yes, on any one deal, you must decide whether it'll be run as a contract assignment play or with one of the other types of plays. Yet you can switch between plays depending on the nature of the deal. That is the whole premise of this playbook that you understand all your options or plays and know all your acquisition and exit strategies. Let me say that again. That is the whole premise of this playbook that you understand all your options or plays and know additional acquisition and exit strategies. This will allow you to develop a game plan or playbook that enables you to adapt to any market or execute a number of exit strategies instead of just one. I will tell you though that there are plays within this playbook that resonates so much with an investor that they choose to exclusively run that play. I get it but remember what I said earlier in the first chapter about being a one hit wonder. You want to be versatile and you want to make your land investing business bulletproof so that you can win against any market. Okay, I'm done with that little tangent. Now let's get back to assignments. A deal where you're less certain about your own ability to resell it might be a prime candidate for assigning with play number three. You might assign the deal to another land investor whose local connections in a market gave them an advantage in reselling the deal. Then for another deal where you felt more confident in being able to sell it to a non-land investor you might opt for the boss play play number two. See how it isn't an all or nothing commitment to a single play for the long hole. You can and should shift between plays. My most successful coaching clients, land investors earning high six figure incomes each year some even earning over seven figures recognize the importance of shifting. They move between land investing plays in a way that's analogous to coaches making adjustments to their game plan during half time. The same goes for the best land investors follow their lead and you can find yourself with some pleasantly victorious paydays from land investing prospecting for deals. Continuing on for the remainder of this chapter let's assume your intention is to run play number three or at least one deal. If you're going to run play number three the assignment play aka wholesaling land deals you'll need a prospect for deals. Prospecting is after all the first step in any play. It's the step where you go out and get the deal. For prospecting you'll be pleased to find that play number three employs the same approaches as past plays. You'll once more be generating leads of people with land they wish to sell at below market value and this will continue to be done in play number three through proven prospecting methods like direct mail cold calling text messaging campaigns. Of those methods I should point out that two in particular cold calling and text messaging may be best suited to play number three. This comes back to how play number three is about speed. It's more advantageous than to quickly contact a prospective seller by phone. That's compared to going the direct mail route and waiting a few weeks for the seller to receive your offer in the mail. Let me clarify this because I don't want you to misinterpret this advice. I can confidently say that direct mail works amazingly but time is of the essence with this assignment play. With the phone whether by texting or cold calling you can quickly swoop in get a property under contract and get on to assigning that contract within days not weeks. Prospecting isn't just about sellers either. For the third play in our playbook you'll need to prospect for your in buyer too. The reason for doing so is that you're no longer selling just a piece of land. Instead like we noted earlier you're selling a business opportunity. Most people don't buy business opportunities. As a result your pull of perspective buyers will likely be very small. So small in fact that was some advanced prospecting you can create a scenario in which you have your in buyer lined up before there's even a contract to sign. When that's achieved you can prospect for specific types of land deals. As an example you might go after deals involving 20 to 40 acre parcels of recreational land in Texas. Those deals would interest Jenna a fellow land investor you've spoken with in the past. Since you know what Jenna wants you can confidently prospect for and then lock up deals meeting her criteria. The same applies with Jeff another land investor. Jeff's looking to do deals on urban infill lots in the Atlanta area. Once more you can use this knowledge of his criteria as an in buyer to guide your efforts in prospecting for land contracts. Unfortunately Jeff isn't a real person neither is Jenna so I can't give you their contact information and let you run off to start finding deals that meet their criteria. You'll need to independently prospect for in buyers. Only in that way you can find your own Jeff and Jenna. I would tell you though that if you get involved in our community there are lots of Jeff's and Jenna's whom you can post assignment deals to. That is another advantage of this play you grow your network. Instead of just selling land to buyers whom you will likely never speak to again you're building lasting relationships with land investors with advanced investors and with builders. Ironically I did this myself on a massive scale and kind of by accident. As I began coaching and training others within land investing and then later started a mastermind for land investors. What I ended up with was not just a large number of contacts but also an active community of like-minded land investors who all get to network and do deals with each other. Many of them would not have met without the connection of my community. I would strongly encourage you to start building your own network in addition to leveraging mine. Nevertheless prospecting for in buyers in the contract assignment play does not have to be complicated. I will give you a pro tip here and show you how you can simplify the process by looking where your in buyer hangs out. Because it's land investors you're seeking this This means going to land selling websites. As of this right 2 of the most popular sites for that are land.com and landwatch.com. Once you're on a land selling website, you'll be able to look through the directory by state or county and even see other land investors listings and the properties they have for sale. With this information, you'll know who's doing land deals, what markets the deals are happening in and what the listing prices are for those deals. A word of warning now, around reviewing land selling websites, the large multi-seller platforms and not individual people selling sites. The warnings that you can easily get overwhelmed when reviewing land sites. So you want to be looking at the large sites, not individual seller sites. As proof, search landwatch for the state of Florida. As of this writing, there are 55,785 Florida listings on landwatch. Imagine in the figurative firehose of information you'd be drinking from if you were looking for sellers to do contracts assignment deals with in Florida. So many listings from so many sellers. In not so many minutes, you'd likely be feeling very overwhelmed. So to avoid or at least dramatically reduce the overwhelm, here are two steps you can take. First, try to drill down on a specific area where you look for other land investors. In place of the entire state of Florida, you might concentrate on a single county, perhaps Lee County or Polk County. Second, after you've narrowed your geographic area, you can farther combat overwhelm by looking for those land investors who have established track records. Track records are important to examine because they indicate how experienced and serious land investors are. The more experienced and serious an investor is, the greater your chance of having a smooth interaction with them and doing contract assignment deals. A smoother interaction means, for example, getting clear guidance from the other investor on what they specifically want in terms of deals. The inner circle. I would strongly encourage you to carefully and strategically cultivate an inner circle of people you can do assignment deals with. Our friends from earlier Jeff and Jenna would like it to be members of your inner circle for doing contract assignments. Along with them, you'd probably have about 10 to 15 more people in that inner circle. The benefit to having an inner circle is that all its members are people you trust, both in general and in land investing specifically. You won't have to worry there for about anyone in the circle wasting your time. Even the proverbial runaround can be an issue when you don't have an inner circle. It arises because other land investors may flip flop on which areas they tell you to find deals for them in. You might be encouraged by another investor to lock up deals in a place like Broward County, Florida. Yet once you brought them deals from Broward, the other investor might have changed their tune. Broward County, oh not anymore, now we're on the Maricopa County in Arizona. Oh, my bad. Or what other half-baked joke of an apology this flaky land investor might give you. So moral of the story. Build an inner circle of land investors whom you can trust and doing assignment contract deals with. Still, how do you get an inner circle? We haven't fully addressed that yet, have we? We started to in discussing land selling websites, but then we jumped into track records and the recent part about inner circles. To bring the discussion full circle, let's connect those earlier threads. Here's how everything fits together. First, by going on land selling websites, you can see who the other land investors are in geographic areas or markets where you'd like to do contract assignment deals. Second, once you've identified all the land investors in each area, you can then use track records as a means of narrowing the field. This will enable you to make a short list of experienced and serious land investors in the area who might be good prospects for your assignments. Third, from there, step two above, you can contact those on your short list, have initial discussions and develop relationships accordingly. Fourth, over time, those land investors whom you developed the strongest relationships with can be members of your inner circle. Lucky them, right? Fifth, another option if building an inner circle sounds like a lot of work to you is to submit your deal for assignment to find vacant land for Travis.com. This is where my coaching clients and community members submit deals they are interested in whole sailing quickly. My wife and I are not just flippers. We're also buy and hold land investors, so we're always looking for a deal. I also have an expansive network of high-network individuals who are looking to buy and hold land without any intent to resell it. This makes them perfect investors to pair you up with for you to collect an assignment fee. Even one that is 10k or more, if the value is there. That's prospecting as it relates to play number three, the assignment play. Next up is execution. It's a stage in any land investing play where you handle the acquisition and disposition sides. Execution in a simpler form. Game number three though is a much simpler play than others. All you do in those three steps we went over before. Number one, find the deal and then number two, lock up a property, get in under contract, and finally number three, flip the contract, assigning it to another land investor or builder. Given its simplicity, play number three doesn't have much in the way of execution. They're not acquiring a property yourself, for instance, so there isn't really an acquisition component. Technically, it could be said that getting a contract isn't acquisition, but that takes place during the prospecting phase. By the time we get to execution in play number three, there's nothing for you to acquire. You will of course want to have performed some due diligence that you can pass on to the land investor. You don't want to attempt to assign contracts without verifying things like road access, utilities, slope, wetlands, and so on. What about disposition? You do dispose of the contract, selling it to another land investor. So play number three has at least something for you to do in execution. You can see what executing the play looks like in the following two examples. In example one, we'll consider a small time assignment play. The guy or gal running this play locks up a property that has a $25,000 market value. Then as they execute the play, our hero or heroine goes to their inner circle and search of a buyer. One member of the inner circle is interested in the deal and ends up purchasing the contract, score. The land investor running this play then gets paid for assigning the contract. As payment, they receive $2500 assignment fee. Not bad for what was likely a day's work or less. $2500 in assignment fees is a good start. Yet you can and I'd argue should go much, much bigger. This leads to example two. In the second case of executing play number three, you can do many of the same things in the preceding example. What's changed, however, is the size of the properties being assigned. You're now dealing with properties in the range of $40,000 to $400,000 for their market value. This results in a higher assignment fee as the fees will be a percentage of the property's market value or a percentage of the equity captured. For exact numbers here in our second example, let's say the property being assigned as a market value of $250,000 and you have it under contract to purchase for $110,000. $250,000 is the amount another land investor would sell the property for after getting the contract to it. And return for a contract on this property, the other land investor might pay you an assignment fee of $25,000. As assignment deals go, netting $25,000 isn't unreasonable if you are targeting high enough value properties. You're more likely to get fees in the 10k to 20k range, but through our funding company we have paid out assignment fees as high as $32,000 for a single property. I would encourage you to build a repeatable, scalable, and sustainable business that is built around your hitting singles and doubles with your deal flow consistently. And that's going to generally net you 10k to 20k assignment fees. All the same, you can assign properties running play number 3 at nearly any level. So as we've seen elsewhere in the land investing, play number 3 is an instance where the sky is the limit. If you want to reach for the sky on contract assignment deals, there are a few specific dues and don'ts you should equip yourself with first. Doos for play number 3. Number 1. Do establish a strong network of potential buyers. Before diving deep into land investment deals, spend time cultivating relationships with potential buyers, developers, and investors. Having a ready list of interested parties can not only streamline the selling process but can also provide valuable feedback on what type of properties are in demand, ensuring your investments are aligned with the market's needs. Number 2. The second do. Familiarize yourself with legal documentation and requirements. This is important. I'm going to read this one again. Number 2. Do familiarize yourself with legal documentation and requirements. Use power and land investing. Make sure you're well versed with the legalities involved in property contracts and assignments. Consider partnering with a real estate attorney or experienced agent who can review and advise on the necessary verbiage, ensuring your contracts are robust and legally sound. This proactive step can save you from potential pitfalls and legal troubles down the road. The third do. Do practice transparency and open communication with all parties involved. Whether it's with sellers, potential buyers, or title companies, maintain open channels of communication. This builds trust, establishes credibility, and ensures all stakeholders are on the same page, reducing the chances of misunderstandings or missed opportunities. Additionally, being upfront about your intentions and strategies can often lead to smoother negotiations and better deals. For the fourth do. Do set clear profit margins and stick to them. Well, it's essential to ensure that deals are attractive to end buyers. It's equally important to have clear boundaries on your desired profit margin. By setting these boundaries, you safeguard against underselling and ensure consistent returns on your investments. Use market research, feedback from your network, and past experiences to set these benchmarks and remain disciplined and adhering to them. Don'ts for play number three. Number one, the first don't. Don't get a property under contract and then try to find someone whom you can flip the contract to. Instead you want to line up prospective buyers in advance. Ideally, these will be people from your inner circle or another trusted source or community. Number two, the second don't. Don't use a purchase agreement unless it contains a verbiage that allows you to assign a property. Buyer or a sign e. Along with an assignment clause in the contract, allowing you to assign it. Laughable, isn't it? The thought of locking up a property only discovers that you can't legally assign it. We see these things repeatedly with our funding company when someone brings us a deal and wants to assign it or get it funded. The title company kicks it back because there's no verbiage in the contract allowing them to assign it to us. Now no one is to blame here. It's simply an oversight. One that I want to help you avoid preemptively and proactively. Three, the third don't. Don't get greedy. This is a short way of reiterating how you ought to leave enough upside in the deals for your end buyer. Make it worth the end buyer's time by avoiding greed and cutting them in on a sweet deal too. Last up is our executive summary. This is the part of the show where we tie together all that's been covered on plane number three in a convenient, portable form. Executive summary of plane number three, the assignment play. Like others before it, plane number three's executive summary has five essentials. Here they are is adapted to the contract assignment play. Mindset. The mindset required for your success in plane number three is one of collaboration. This means regarding land deals at least in the third play as multiplayer games. Taking such a view, a multiplayer mentality is essential because the contract assignment game cannot be won by an individual's acting alone. You'll need the help of other players, i.e. other land investors or builders. In order to assign your deals and get paid assignment fees, skill set. Hate being on the phone? You'll need to change that. For play number three is all about using the phone to quickly reach sellers, line up contracts, and then reach land investors in equally quick time to assign those contracts. It's imperative then that you come to love being on the phone. If not, then you need to outsource this to a cold calling company. Changing your attitude is an immediate way to make telephone time more enjoyable. When making such a change, you could regard calls to sellers and potential contract buyers as "panning for gold." That is after all what the term prospecting used to mean back in the 19th century during the gold rush. In those days you'd prospect by panning through account lists of soil. Somewhere amid what you've panned there was, in all likelihood, a bit of gold. You simply had to keep going in order to find it. So not sold on the idea of prospecting for yourself? No problem. You can easily outsource your cold calling campaigns and let others mine your gold for you. Did you choose this route? It will empower you to get on the phone and find contract deals, figuratively worth their weight and gold. That's what we're saying about being on the phone can also be considered mindset. Here are a few specific skills for play number three, too. Those skills are the ability to speak persuasively to others, sellers and buyers, attention to detail, especially in the details around whether you can legally assign a given contract, and the skill of developing and maintaining long-term relationships as when cultivating that inner circle. Next up is capital. Not applicable. Well, almost. This play isn't a full not applicable in the area of capital. You do need some cash for marketing campaigns and getting leads. Just nothing on the scale of capital required in the preceding plays where you can actually acquire properties using your own funds or that of capital partners. So no capital needed with this play. Connections. Your inner circle. Those land investors in it will be the primary source of connections in play number three. Along with them, it's a good idea to build connections with investor friendly title companies, connecting to such companies as a must because not all title companies are okay with contract assignment deals. One more connection to recommend for you in play number three is real estate agents. The agents won't be listing any properties for you. Their purpose instead will be to provide you with an assessment of value. So you know what the properties you get on a contract are worth. That knowledge is invaluable as it dictates the amount you can expect to earn for a given deal and an assignment fee. Fees typically being a percentage of the property's market value. These opinions of value will be your baseline or frame of reference when agreeing upon a market value with the land investor you assign the contract to. In fact, you can allow the land investor you are assigning the contract to speak with the agent and use them to list the properties if they don't have an agent lined up. Next up is Tools. The best tools for running Play No. 3 are, well they're not going to be mentioned. Why not? Only because of how often the best tools change. From text messaging tools to those involved in making cold calls and pulling data for mailing lists, it's all in a continual state of flux. So nearly anything in M&S swear by today, anything that's so totally state of the art today, is going to seem dated in a few years. Actually, I take that back. There's one tool that's going to remain in fashion. It's called the phone. You know, as the device you're probably currently using for only taking pictures, watching videos, and checking social media, yes the phone can do all of these things, but it's also a powerful tool for running Play No. 3. Did you know that the phone can also be used for making outgoing calls? Yes it can. In fact, that may be its highest and best use. Work the phones and work the groups and communities, and you will find great traction with this play. Again, a CRM, a customer relationship management software, and a follow-up system is also going to be critical for capturing and converting leads, so I guess that's two critical tools for this play. Ready to assign contracts? Are you ready to wholesale some land? At this point, you should be. The material that's been presented in this chapter is enough to make you dangerous, a true contract assignment killer. Before you head off to run Play No. 3, however, I'd encourage you to finish the book. By doing that, you'll learn the remaining four land investing plays and see how those later plays compare with the one you've just learned. Of the remaining plays in the Land Investors Playbook, we'll turn now to one that puts you in a unique position. No longer will you be a mere land investor. Instead with this next play, you'll also become a bank. How's that for a cliffhanger? No spoilers here though. My lips are sealed until the next chapter on how exactly you become a bank. We'll see you there. You've completed another chapter. Arm now with a wealth of new strategies. Yet here's a challenge we all face. Our minds as intricate as they are tend to let new information fade amid the day's countless distractions. Further, knowledge alone isn't enough. It's akin to learning about farming theory, but lacking the tractor to actually farm the land. The solution? I've crafted a pathway that transforms your newfound knowledge into actionable insights. Welcome to the Land Boss, Mastermind Vault. An immersive platform where these strategies and many more become tangible. I've deep into training videos, utilize exclusive resources, and gain the tools you need to act and profit from these potent strategies these plays in the playbook. For those committed to true progress, not just gathering information, I invite you to explore the Mastermind Vault and join the esteemed ranks of the Land Boss Mastermind at thelandinvestorsplaybook.com/mastermind. As a gesture of gratitude for your dedication, enjoy a massive discount by using the coupon code Playbook. Eager for more insights? Let's journey to the next chapter and continue to unlock the treasures of this playbook.