Chapter #7: The Trophy Hunting Play

Play number 7, the trophy hunting play. I would give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground. William Shakespeare. Problem properties. As land investors, we've all come across them. These are the properties that have at least one, if not more, made your problems. These problems can include anything from a lack of access, i.e. the parcels landlock, to the property being unbuildable. You can't build a house there, to the land's location falling in a flood zone. Whatever the problems, so-called problem properties, are nearly always worth avoiding. For if you, the land investor, are skittish about purchasing the property, just imagine how prospective buyers will feel. A prospective buyer's unlikely to view a problem property, with kind eyes and think creatively about the ways to use it, in spite of the negatives. No and all likelihood prospective buyers will see the property, spot the problems, and immediately move on. We can't blame them for doing that, of course. After all, wants to buy an item that clearly has issues. I don't, you probably don't. And the prospective buyers of our land parcels aren't likely to want it either. In place of problem properties, I believe we should seek properties at the other extreme. Pieces of land where the positive attributes jump out, instead of any negative ones. These land parcels are so compelling to prospective buyers, in fact, that they seem to sell themselves. Still, how realistic is this suggestion? It's a valid concern because, frankly, what land investor wouldn't want land that sells itself. Virtually all of us would, but actually finding such properties can be another story. That's where this chapter comes in. In the following pages, we're going to cover a type of land that sells itself, and which can be systematically located by you, the land investor. This chapter will introduce a play involving parcels that are the absolute farthest thing from problem properties. These highly desirable properties to be discussed are best termed as trophy properties. What are trophy properties? I call them trophy properties for two reasons. First there's the fact that these properties are regarded by buyers in the same way as trophies, meaning that buyers will take pride in having the properties just as a person might with a trophy they'd want in a competition. The other reason we use the word trophy and describing the properties for this chapter's play is more literal. In a literal sense, trophy refers to the fact that one specific type of these properties can have trophy elk on them. Is it a requirement for a trophy property to have trophy elk occupying it? Probably not. My mind goes to trophy elk for the simple reason that my first trophy property had a lot of trophy elk on it. The elk and pictures of them on our listing photos were undoubtedly a major draw for prospective buyers, along with the fact that the property boarded state land. With that first property, I remember being astounded at the number of interested buyers. The buyer leads flowed in with such ferocity that I actually left the listing up for a while after selling the property, just out of curiosity to see how much continued interest would keep pouring in. The more people inquired about the property, the more intrigued I became. What was it about this particular piece of land that made it so attractive? I searched for the answer and eventually arrived at the concept of trophy properties. The breakthrough for me in developing the trophy properties concept came from a second deal after that first one with the elk. The second deal involved a lakefront property. The waters of the lake may have been peaceful, yet I still experienced a tsunami in terms of buyer leads chaotically pouring in. This time around with the lakefront property, I was fortunate to have a frame of reference. I could take the lakefront property and compare it to the earlier property, that one with the trophy elk. Both properties had flown off the shelf. What was it that united them and being so desirable? The answer I came to provides the basis for our definition of a trophy property. Defining the term now, a trophy property is a land deal where the property fronts a highly desirable attribute. For example, the property either borders state land or is on a waterfront of some sort. Beachfront, lakefront, riverfront, canalfront. Here of these conditions typically makes the property a trophy to acquire in the eyes of the buyers. In addition, you may also find that a trophy property has other compelling attributes like the presence of trophy elk. The pattern was that these properties fronted an attribute, and that is why you will hear me throughout the chapters and other trainings interchangeably refer to a frontage property and a trophy property. Rounding out the basic definition of a trophy property is the profit potential. Trophy properties will have a high five figure or even six figure potential profit. The potential profit in a trophy property deal stands as a clear benefit of running this play. It gives me goosebumps to consider how one or two trophy deals produce earnings equivalent to what the average land investor makes in an entire year. Reflect on that notion for any length of time and you'll undoubtedly feel the same way about this play. Then there's the row-ass, the return on ad spend. That's another benefit to running the trophy hunting play. With this play you're not sending out thousands of offers per month. The reason being there aren't thousands of people with trophy properties, at least not in any single county. You can and I believe should target more than one county, but more on that later. Yet, regardless of the number of counties that cost a male, cold call or text, those who have trophy properties in your target counties, will inevitably be lower than a standard county-wide direct male campaign targeting all owners of every type of vacant land. Couple this fact with the high five and six figure profit potential per deal in the trophy property strategy. The result is less marketing dollars spent, more earnings per deal, and a terrific return on your overall investment in orchestrating each deal. Oh, and it's fun too. I mean that seriously, so don't scoff or roll your eyes. Instead, look at some trophy properties. Give them even a passing glance in your bound to have fun. Not necessarily like six flags, amusement park level fun, but as much fun as you can have when viewing stunning mountain or waterfront properties, and even more stunning potential profits. Unfortunately though, you can also be stunned in negative ways too. You might be stunned for example to discover how manually intensive it is to build a list for pursuing trophy property deals. Building a list like that frequently requires tremendous manual effort. This is because there are no universal codes with which to readily identify trophy properties. You cannot for instance always check that WFP and a county's land use codes and use that code to immediately identify waterfront properties in the given county. Note WFP is a made up abbreviation for waterfront property used only to make a point in this example. Some data sources however will allow you to pull an entire list of waterfront lots. When you're able to pull such a list, you'll engage what I call the shotgun method for trophy hunting. The shotgun method is incredible, but alas, most data sources are aggregators of county data and most counties do things very differently. So there's no single data source, at least among those I've encountered, that allows you to consistently pull waterfront properties at the county level via the shotgun method in all 3100 plus counties nationwide. Without universal codes, you get the fun of manually picking out trophy properties. The fact is, it probably won't be fun to manually compile a list of trophy properties to target, but this is another thing that prevents others from running this play. Amid the drudgery though, you can take heart in knowing that this aspect of the trophy hunting play, how manually intensive it is, stands as the only major drawback. There really isn't much else to dislike about the play. Manually building your trophy hunting list is what I would term "land sniping" for trophy properties. We'll be focusing on it in this chapter because it's very learnable, surprisingly repeatable, and it works, and any and every county you target. Suppose now that you can stomach land sniping for trophy properties and the manual effort it requires. Maybe you have some good playlists to listen to while you're manually compiling marketing lists for trophy properties, or maybe you just grin and bear it, pushing through the tediousness that can accompany manual tasks. Whatever the means, let's say you're ready to pursue land sniping for trophy properties. In that case you should be clear. Clear than we've been so far on what constitutes a trophy property. To refine our definition of trophy properties, we can describe them as "frontage properties". That means these pieces of land will front or join any of the following. Rivers, lakes, beaches, canals, state land, federal land, or Bureau of Land Management land. Being "frontage properties" with whatever they join or front is usually what makes a trophy property so valuable. As evidence of the value, think about a random piece of land that's on a riverfront. Think front, beachfront, waterfront, or happens to be fronting Bureau of Land Management land. Without even seeing the hypothetical property, doesn't it intuitively sound more valuable on account of its frontage? My guess is that it does. I will concede though that what's valuable as a trophy property does depend on your particular target market or market. If you're in central Florida, for example, your definition of a trophy property is not going to be 640 acres of private land, adjoining 640 acres of Bureau of Land Management desert land. Central Florida doesn't have deserts for one thing. Plus there aren't vast tracks of rural land. 640 acres are more just sitting around unused and central Florida. You'd see instances of sits-aland and northern Arizona, but not in central Florida. The trophy property for central Florida might instead be a lakefront lot. This is consistent with a region, especially Polk County, which has more than 380 lakes in the county. As this example in Florida indicates, you'll need to clearly identify what a trophy property is and is not. In the markets where you intend to execute this land investing play, making that distinction is essential so that you know what it is you're even looking for. In addition to defining what trophy properties look like for you specifically, there's something else you need to take care of. The second big thing is to pick which counties you're going to hunt for trophy properties in. That's on you as your responsibility. Admittedly, it is something that you may want outsource. If only we could just have a broker hand us their boots on the ground list of good counties for trophy properties campaign. Nonetheless, life doesn't work that way. As the motivational speaker Jim Rowne once said, "You can't hire someone else to do your push-ups for you." So we've got to roll up our sleeves and find multiple counties for our campaigns. Now why multiple counties and not just one or two? As your answer, consider the type of properties we're targeting. These properties are trophies and like any trophy, they're not commonplace. Now think about sports for example, where only a few athletes and a league will have trophies. It's the same with land where only a few of the properties in a given county will be trophies. Given the scarcity of trophy properties, it's highly unlikely that you'll have 2,500 or more such properties in a single county. Everything changes though if you add in multiple counties. Act to say 10 different counties and it's perfectly feasible for you to find 2,500 plus trophy properties. The takeaway then is to regard the trophy hunting play as a play that works, a mile wide and an inch deep. The mile wide part just signifies the need to stretch your efforts out across many different counties. In contrast, the phrase inch deep recognizes the limited number of trophy properties to be found in any one single county. Now based on the limitations just described, you may be wondering how many trophy properties you need to target for a single acquisition. My recommendation would be generally speaking at least 1,500 to 2,000. This range reflects what I've found to be the number of offers that it takes to get one trophy property deal. It's also a sufficient range when you consider that each seller stands to be contacted three different times. As per the three campaigns you're going to run. If you want to increase the rate at which you get accepted offers, you will need to increase your offer price percentage. It is for that reason that it is tough for me and a book to answer the question, how many letters does it take to get a trophy deal? I am blind to some of the key variables and that is why the answer starts with it depends. I'll give you four of the top reasons it depends on. First, the number of campaigns you'll run to your list. Second, the variety of marketing channels you will employ. Third, the percentage of market value that you plan to offer. Fourth and last, your specific follow-up process. With trophy properties defined now, along with counties to seek them in, let's talk about prospecting. Prospecting for trophy properties. The following advice is simply to provide you with some framework or guidance, not gospel. You're welcome to improvise, but I find most people benefit from having some framework and guidance when adding a play to their playbook. To prospect, I would suggest you run three campaigns. These three campaigns are the heart of the trophy hunting play. The campaigns also represent what I believe are the best practices for land sniping and will give you the greatest chance of success with this play. In campaign number one, you send out a letter of interest to the owners of trophy properties. Alongside the letter, you or a calling service would also be cold calling each owner and sending each owner a text message. Notice here how we aren't manually valuing the properties yet. Nor are we extending offers. What we're doing in the first campaign is trying to identify motivated sellers. Campaign number one would be followed by a waiting period. You'd wait for about 30 days in order to give the campaign time to work its magic. During that time, you could work at building rapport and working the leads that come in, but you can currently copy out each property on your trophy list and estimate its full market value. These efforts in the end term would be a good preparation for your final campaign, where you'll be including an offer price. So following the waiting period, it would be time for the second campaign. For the second campaign, you'd employ all the same outreach methods as before. That means once again, sending letters of interest, making cold calls, and sending text messages. There would be one notable difference though. In campaign number two, and your second campaign, the messaging would be framed as the following. You'd be asking in other words whether each property owner received the first item you'd sent them, which is a letter or a text, in campaign number one. Hey, just want to make sure you got it. That's the angle. you'd take with the outreach in the second campaign for trophy properties. You mean what would the next set be after a campaign number two? Well then you'd wait. Waiting 30 more days for the second of your campaigns to shake out more leads. Your second waiting period wouldn't be nearly as passive as the first one, following campaign number one. While waiting for the second campaign to bear fruit, you'd be individually and manually valuing and pricing every single property and your marketing list. The next batch of pricing builds on your work from earlier. We call how I mentioned that after sending the first campaign, you'd start going through the list and estimating values. By the time you reach the second waiting period, you'll be digging a little deeper and ensuring your comps and values are accurate at the census tract level, not just the zip code level. I realize performing census tract pricing on all properties may sound intimidating to you. Remember though that such manual work is the only major drop-back to the trophy hunting play. It's also a formidable barrier, preventing other land investors from pursuing the same strategy. So if you run this play, be sure to spend the time establishing an estimated market value of each property after campaign number two. It's essential that you do so on account of what's coming in the third and final campaign. Picking up 30 days after its predecessor, campaign number three, comes as a hybrid approach. Your letter of interest has morphed into a hybrid blind offer. Your offer amount in this letter is accompanied by an admission in the letter that you may have been off in the desktop valuation and offer amount. Those receiving your letter therefore have the option to write in a counter offer if they wish and can support it. Now why allow owners to make a counter offer? Zoom out on campaign number three and the answer becomes clear. This third campaign is, in essence, a last-ditch effort to squeeze some deals out of the list you've been marketing to. The campaign's blind offer crystallizes the conversation, removing any ambiguity and giving owners a clear offer on their property. Then the option to make a counter offer provides a safety net for new seller leads from campaign number three. The safety net catches new leads ensuring they don't fall away upon seeing the price in your blind offer. What happens after campaign number three? At that point you'd handle seller leads from your third campaign along with existing seller leads from the preceding two campaigns. By handling, I'm referring to doing all the standard things on the deal for acquisition and dispositions side of any land flipping deal. Since earlier chapters in this book have covered the steps in a flip and due diligence, we can skip a rehash of them here. What I will say, however, on acquisitions and dispositions is that the trophy hunting play has considerably more follow-up than a standard flip. There's so much potential profit in a single trophy deal that you'll need to maintain strong, consistent, and not pushy. Contact with the prospective sellers. Your three campaigns are ways of doing this and the follow-up must also be done with those prospective sellers who raise their hand during the campaign expressing a desire to potentially sell you their trophy property. Another point to stress is you move beyond the campaigns and into actual acquisitions and dispositions is the importance of getting specialized land agents opinions of valued. Opinions from agents who specialize in land are perhaps doubly important when pursuing trophy properties. I say that since your first two campaigns are providing the letters of interest versus blind offers. Letters of interest may draw prospective sellers to you, but you can't acquire their trophy properties unless you provided a specific offer price. How can you be certain that you're offering the right amount? This is where specialized land agents enter the picture. They'll guide you in your pricing. That's agents is in plural as in more than one. My own suggestion is to get two agents opinions for each trophy property that you're going to make an offer on. With two agents opinion of value combined with your own estimated value, you can triangulate and ensure accuracy in the dollar amount you're planning to offer a seller. If I'm giving you specific recommendations like how many opinions to get, then it's probably a good time to shift into our list of recommendations for this chapter. These would be the Doos and Dones which you've encountered throughout this book. Doos and Dones for play number seven. First, do identify your target trophy property. This harkens back to our earlier point on identifying what a trophy property looks like in the areas where you're prospecting. Something I'll add here which you might find helpful is a quick strategy for finding riverfront lots or waterfront lots. When pursuing that type of trophy property, you could potentially move along the length of a river. Some data sources facilitate this by allowing you to draw a line down the center of a river and buffer vacant land parcels along the route within, say, a thousand feet of the line, for example. Other data sources will require you to manually click and add each waterfront parcel to your trophy hunting list one at a time. In all of these cases, you then be able to visually pick out waterfront lots. Number two, don't think this play is limited to a few geographic areas. Let me say it for you as clearly as possible. This play works anywhere. Get the picture? I hope so because after successfully doing trophy properties myself and with my coaching students, I can unequivocally tell you that this play works anywhere. Also, if you're somehow out of ideas on how to find trophy properties in your area, I'd encourage you to get creative. Look for examples of attributes that may veer away from the two primary ones we've been discussing. It's not a cardinal sin, for instance, to view trophy properties in your area in relation to local events. Nevada as an example has the Burning Man Festival. Imagine having a land that borders this world-famous event. Or how about an albacurky where land bordering the site of its annual hot air balloon festival might be seen as a trophy, too. Events are admittedly a different basis to judge a trophy property on than our earlier standards, i.e. strictly waterfront lots or bordering state or federal lamp. No, you can be flexible because here's something important. It's taken me up to this point to put into words, but it matters when you're considering trophy properties. To call something a trophy is to make a value judgment about it. And value judgments are inherently subjective. Unlike, say, mathematics, we don't have a final and definite answers on what it is and isn't for what a trophy property is. We do need standards for that, which is why I provided a concrete definition earlier in this chapter. Yet if your market has different parameters for a trophy property, then roll with it. Don't stay in a market and pursue lakefront lots if that isn't considered a trophy property in that county. Number three, don't let the amount of work deter you. Hunting for trophy properties will require more work, particular manual work than other land investing plays. You can savor this seemingly better fact, however, because it's a strong deterrent to others running the trophy hunting play. The average land investor will probably like the idea of trophy properties and grasp the strategy's power. Still, when it comes to actually doing the work, putting in substantially more time and effort than say a traditional flip. Most land investors are unlikely to be as enthusiastic. Let them be turned off from this play. As others recoil and fear, you can embrace the extra work and score some lucrative trophy properties. Number four, Do get a survey. In the previous "don't" we talked about the need for greater levels of work when pursuing trophy properties. An immediate example of more work is manually compiling a list of trophy properties rather than getting a list with a few clicks in some database. Less obvious in the more work category is work involved once you've identified potential properties to acquire. In this regard, you'll also need to go the extra mile and do the work required to get a survey. Why get a survey? Protection, that's why. With a survey you get a professional to confirm that there are no issues with a property you're planning to purchase. There will be occasions where you need to get a wetlands survey in addition to a topographic survey. A surveyer can warn you about issues like flood zones or wetlands. This is particularly relevant to waterfront lots, as well as a lack of easements. Plus a surveyer can also help you determine whether a property is really worth the amount you plan to pay for it. They won't specifically appraise it or anything like that, but the information they provide will allow you to determine the actual buildable acreage, which assists you in an accurate valuation. On a related note, I would encourage you to seek out real estate agents who specialize in land and are local to the areas you're targeting. Like surveyers, a locally based land-centric agent can visit the properties you plan to purchase, providing boots on the ground, opinions on the listing prices, and alerting you to any problems with the properties. 5. Do leverage others to build your list of trophy properties. In the beginning, there's no getting around having to build your list or lists of trophy properties yourself. But once you've gotten the hang of it, you don't have to continue doing so. At that point, when making a list of trophy properties to pursue has become practically a science for you, feel free to outsource it. And certainly the approach I've taken in my career. In the beginning, I did as I've just preached to you, manually crafted my lists. Then as I achieved land-investing mastery, I enlisted virtual assistance to build my list for $3 or $4 per hour. The key to outsourcing list creation was recording videos and writing SOPs, standard operating procedures. As these materials, videos and SOPs, my VA's virtual assistance could see exactly what to do and then implement it. I also provided them with a sample of the output or finished product, a trophy list, thereby eliminating any mystery over what the end product, a list of trophy properties, should look like. 6. Let your emotions blind you. Since they're desirable trophies, you may find yourself falling in love with a trophy property. If you do feel the love or even just positive emotions toward a property, then it's time to take a step back. Step back, reset your emotions to a neutral or mostly neutral state, and try to view the property or properties with detachment. Detachment will help you avoid overpaying for trophy properties. It will also keep you from making the disastrous assumption that others share your same enthusiasm over a property. On the second point about disastrous assumptions, this often crops up because land investors let their love for a property line them to the hard market data. The data can indicate that there are no sold comps in the area for properties resembling a particular trophy property. Yet if a land investor is smitten with the property, this affection may cause the investor to mentally steamroll over the inconvenient data and rationalize why their property is still a winner. How exactly do you detach and avoid being figuratively swept off your feet by a trophy property? The key is due diligence. No matter the property, make sure you maintain high standards on due diligence. Maintaining these standards and being rigorous when investigating each and every trophy property serves as a safeguard. It keeps you from caving into biases, especially those of love and affection for any one individual property. To put this another way, properties should prove themselves to you during the due diligence period and not the other way around. I.e., you convincing yourself as to why a property is the one. Number 7. I don't think this is a one-hit wonder play. Athletes can win more than one trophy. In fact, the best athletes have walls adorned with trophies and perhaps even entire rooms to house them. You might not be able to dunk a basketball like Michael Jordan or throw a touchdown like Tom Brady, but trust me when I tell you that you can stack up more trophy deals than these guys have rings. All of this is to say that trophy properties aren't a one-time thing. You can rack up trophy properties on a repeated and consistent basis. So start and keep a marketing for them if the strategy resonates with you. And in your marketing campaigns, don't be afraid to mail the same areas over and over again or market to them on multiple channels. Well, and texting, and cold calling, and ringless voicemail. Time is on your side with the trophy hunting play. In the sense that the more times you try it, the more knowledge you'll gain, and the more trophy properties you'll eventually find yourself with. Do read this executive summary. Okay, that's not an official due for the land investing play in this chapter, but it is a due. If you're reading this book and you want a high level wrap up of what we've covered in the proceeding pages on trophy properties. Executive summary of play number seven, the trophy hunting play. Here are the five essentials for taking action on the trophy hunting play. Those essentials as in earlier chapters are centered around mindset, skill set, capital connections, and tools. The right mindset for pursuing trophy properties is to start with the end buyer in mind. Think carefully on who exactly stands to purchase the trophy properties you'll be hunting for. Also for this intended buyer, how will they be using the trophy properties? Once you've asked these questions, go one step farther and consider whether there's data supporting a strong demand. You can see this from stats like days on market and sold to for sale ratios. Hires better on the ratio sold to for sale, while lower is better when it comes to days on market. Skill set. The most important skill in running a trophy properties campaign is the ability to assemble a list of trophy properties. To prospect for areas that may meet your desired trophy criteria, select boxes such as Waterfront or type in keywords such as hunting or Waterfront on any of the land listing sites such as zillow.com or land.com and you will find potential areas to start prospecting in for trophy properties. Thus your skill set must include, first and foremost, strong knowledge and capability with using county GIS websites or other mapping programs. Tools always change, so I prefer to keep the books companion website, the landinvestorsplaybook.com updated and point you there. Just click on the Tools button when you get there. After this skill, most of the other skills we've seen in earlier plays, negotiation and phone skills, for example, will apply to this play as well. Capital. Remember what we said in the portfolios chapter about digging the well before your thirsty? That advice applies to trophy properties too. Be sure to dig your well of capital long in advance so that you're ready to go when a trophy property comes in. Also, if you intend to self-fund the trophy property deal, I would advise being okay with paying a little more. Be sure you're not just paying more because your love struck over a property and blind to reality. But if that isn't the case, it's okay to pay a little bit more because of the trophy nature of a property which can guarantee outsized returns when sold. Connections. Specialized land agents, title companies, land surveyors and wet land surveyors, yes, that's different than just a land surveyor, are all your friends when running the trophy hunting play. Drone photographers, traditional photographers, and contractors were also be useful in this play, as they helped to prepare a property for selling at top dollar. Tools We touched on the tools for finding trophy properties in the point above on SkillSet. Other tools to add to the list now include browser extensions for scraping sales comms. To ensure I point you toward the most current browser extensions, please check out the book's companion website for the latest and greatest at the landinvestorsplaybook.com and click on Tools. With this executive summary above, we've come to an end of this chapter and we're also nearing the end of the book. You've completed another chapter, the final chapter in the land investors playbook. You are now armed with a wealth of new strategies and enough plays in your playbook to help you scale the seven figures and beyond. Remember though knowledge alone is not enough. We talked about this earlier. It's like learning about farming theory but lacking the tractor to actually farm the land. Now, I've shared every strategy I can in this book. I've held nothing back, but I can only do so much in book format. If you want to dive deep into training videos, utilize exclusive resources and gain the tools you need to act and profit from these potent strategies from these plays in the playbook. I'd like to invite you to join the land boss mastermind. Please visit the landinvestorsplaybook.com and you can easily click on Mastermind or you can click on MiniCourse. I've given you the opportunity and the option to individually purchase MiniCourse, which are essentially tied to each play in this playbook or to purchase all these strategies in course format via the land boss mastermind vault. Now as a gesture of gratitude for your dedication and sticking with me through this whole book, I want to encourage you to use the coupon code playbook upon checkout if you choose to do our land boss mastermind. It's going to help you enjoy a massive, massive discount. Alright, let's wrap things up and move on to the conclusion of this book where we help tie all of these plays together.