Flip Dirt, Print Money: The Land Flipping Blueprint | Joe McCall

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Science of Flipping Episode: Flip Dirt, Print Money: The Land Flipping Blueprint | Joe McCall
Host: Justin Colby, Bleav
Release Date: June 20, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The Science of Flipping, host Justin Colby welcomes long-time friend and land flipping expert Joe McCall. The conversation delves into the intricacies of land flipping, offering listeners a comprehensive blueprint to navigate this niche within real estate investing. Joe shares his decade-long experience, techniques, and the systems he's developed to streamline the land flipping process.

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The Evolution of Real Estate Podcasts

Justin Colby [01:28]:
"We usually are the old guys in the room so we know a thing or two. We call it wisdom."

Joe reminisces about the early days of real estate podcasts, highlighting how both he and Justin were among the pioneers in this space. They discuss the inception of their podcasts, the influence of Sean Terry, and the surge of interview-based formats inspired by figures like John Lee Dumas.

Joe McCall [03:02]:
"Sean Terry's idea, gave it to me. Yeah."

This foundation set the stage for their focus on sharing knowledge and interviewing successful investors, a trend that has become a staple in the podcasting world today.

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Diving into Land Flipping

Justin [04:14]:
"So, you know, most people think real estate transactions in single-family assets... You've been able to find an avenue that all of us... would like to understand more of."

Joe transitions the conversation to the topic of land flipping, explaining how it differs from typical single-family home transactions. He emphasizes the simplicity and lower overhead associated with flipping land compared to houses.

Joe McCall [04:52]:
"I'm a simple guy, and I like to keep it small... I like to keep things really, really simple."

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Identifying Profitable Land Markets

Joe outlines his strategy for identifying lucrative land deals by focusing on active markets where buyers are consistently purchasing land. He recommends starting with platforms like LandWatch.com, akin to Zillow for land, to gauge activity in various states and counties.

Joe McCall [07:03]:
"Florida's a big one right now. Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri. Believe it or not, a lot of people are buying land in southwest Missouri right now."

He highlights the importance of targeting affordable land to attract a broader pool of buyers and avoid markets saturated with agricultural land, which typically sees less transactional activity.

Joe McCall [07:20]:
"So I start with looking at what states are active with buyers recently and current... Where are the investors right now?"

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Leveraging Tools and Technology

Joe discusses the use of digital tools to streamline the land flipping process. He praises FreedomSoft, specifically its ZipFinder tool, for identifying top-performing zip codes. Additionally, he mentions utilizing Chrome extensions to scrape data from Redfin and Zillow, enabling him to analyze median prices and sale trends efficiently.

Joe McCall [09:08]:
"One of my favorite tools is FreedomSoft. And FreedomSoft has a tool in there called ZipFinder. And that just makes it a whole lot easier."

He also shares his experience with developing a custom Chrome extension using Manus IM, which automates the scraping and analysis of comparable sales (comps) to determine property values quickly.

Joe McCall [34:14]:
"Manus IM is one of those agentic AI tools... and you can export it into a spreadsheet."

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Effective Marketing Strategies

Joe emphasizes the effectiveness of direct mail campaigns in land flipping, citing significantly higher response rates compared to traditional house wholesaling. He shares his approach to crafting compelling postcards that encourage sellers to respond without being overly aggressive.

Joe McCall [17:58]:
"With land we're averaging 3 to 5%. That's a great response rate."

Furthermore, he highlights the importance of building relationships with realtors, leveraging their networks to gain access to off-market deals and benefiting from their expertise in local markets.

Joe McCall [22:10]:
"You get the list, you skip trace it, and you could just start cold calling them."

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Negotiation Tactics and Offer Strategies

Joe outlines his straightforward negotiation tactics, focusing on offering no more than 50% of the property's estimated value based on comprehensive research. He avoids extensive negotiations by presenting offers that align with what buyers are willing to pay, thereby simplifying the transaction process.

Joe McCall [33:44]:
"I never offer more than 50% of what I think I can sell it quickly for."

He also discusses his contract strategies, which include no earnest money deposits and relying solely on due diligence contingencies, allowing flexibility and minimizing risk.

Joe McCall [20:57]:
"My contract is contingent on due diligence."

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Overcoming Challenges in Land Flipping

Joe addresses common challenges in land flipping, such as dealing with landlocked properties or those in flood-prone areas. He offers practical solutions, like partnering with specialists or targeting buyers with specific interests (e.g., recreational uses).

Joe McCall [28:29]:
"The main one is access. Okay, can you get to the property? Is it landlocked?"

He also advises against prejudging potential buyers, drawing parallels with the residential market where unique buyer needs can turn seemingly unfavorable deals into profitable ones.

Joe McCall [30:42]:
"There's a pig for every barn. Because you may think who would on earth want to buy this property?"

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Building a Sustainable Land Flipping Business

Joe shares insights into building a scalable land flipping business, incorporating his family into the process to create a sustainable and automated system. He describes how his teenage sons assist with comping properties and sending offers, contributing to significant profits without requiring extensive supervision.

Joe McCall [37:11]:
"So that's why I got into land because I wanted to do something with my boys."

This approach not only increases efficiency but also fosters a family-oriented business model that can adapt as the market evolves.

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Conclusion and Call to Action

Justin wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to engage further with Joe through his Flip Dirt Challenge, a platform where Joe offers deeper insights, tools, and strategies for successful land flipping.

Joe McCall [46:45]:
"Every week we run this challenge, and I dive deep... So if you don't get everything you want from this episode, go to flipdirtchallenge.com."

Justin also promotes the episode's value, urging listeners to share it with others interested in land flipping to help them leverage the strategies discussed.

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Key Takeaways

1. Market Selection: Focus on active land markets with high buyer activity using platforms like LandWatch.com.
2. Affordable Land: Target affordable parcels to attract a larger pool of buyers and reduce competition.
3. Use of Technology: Utilize tools like FreedomSoft's ZipFinder and custom Chrome extensions for efficient data analysis.
4. Direct Mail Success: Implement direct mail campaigns for higher response rates in land deals.
5. Realtor Partnerships: Build strong relationships with realtors to access exclusive deals and leverage their local expertise.
6. Simplified Negotiations: Offer competitive prices based on median values to streamline negotiations and close deals faster.
7. Family Involvement: Incorporate family members into the business process to enhance efficiency and sustainability.
8. Continuous Learning: Participate in challenges and continuous education to stay updated with market trends and strategies.

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Notable Quotes

• Joe McCall [07:03]:
  "Florida's a big one right now. Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri. Believe it or not, a lot of people are buying land in southwest Missouri right now."

• Joe McCall [09:08]:
  "One of my favorite tools is FreedomSoft. And FreedomSoft has a tool in there called ZipFinder. And that just makes it a whole lot easier."

• Joe McCall [17:58]:
  "With land we're averaging 3 to 5%. That's a great response rate."

• Joe McCall [28:29]:
  "The main one is access. Okay, can you get to the property? Is it landlocked?"

• Joe McCall [37:11]:
  "So that's why I got into land because I wanted to do something with my boys."

• Joe McCall [46:45]:
  "Every week we run this challenge, and I dive deep... So if you don't get everything you want from this episode, go to flipdirtchallenge.com."

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Resources Mentioned

• LandWatch.com: Primary platform for identifying active land markets.
• FreedomSoft: Software with tools like ZipFinder for market analysis.
• Redfin & Zillow: Platforms for researching land sales and comps.
• Manus IM: Agentic AI tool for creating custom Chrome extensions.
• Flip Dirt Challenge: flipdirtchallenge.com – Joe McCall's challenge platform for deeper land flipping insights.

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This episode offers a treasure trove of actionable strategies and insights for both novice and seasoned real estate investors looking to diversify into land flipping. Joe McCall's systematic approach, combined with his emphasis on leveraging technology and building strong realtor relationships, provides a robust framework for achieving success in the land flipping niche.

Transcript

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[Justin]

The science of flipping Family welcome back to another incredible podcast. I have a very long time friend. We are usually the old guys in the room so we know a thing or two. We call it wisdom. And a good friend of mine, he teaches all things. How to flip land, how to deal with land. We all get land deals. How do we handle them? Joe McCullough's here everybody.

[Joe McCullough]

What's up Justin? Good to see you, man.

[Justin]

Good to see you.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

So we were just talking off camera. So you had me on your podcast?

[Joe McCullough]

It I ten years ago and one week it was episode 105. Ten years ago, man.

[Justin]

Are you still ripping and running on your podcast?

[Joe McCullough]

I've been doing it since 2011.

[Justin]

Isn't that great?

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah. And I thought I missed the boat when I started. I thought I was too late into the podcast game.

[Justin]

Our mutual friend Jason Hartman, for sure.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

Did he should have kept going?

[Joe McCullough]

Well, he's still going.

[Justin]

He's going. But there was a phase where I think he broke his chain.

[Joe McCullough]

Really?

[Justin]

And he was like that was a big mistake on my.

[Joe McCullough]

Wow. I didn't know that.

[Justin]

Yeah. Yeah. It's. I mean, so.

[Joe McCullough]

Well, when I started the podcast, there was only three other real estate podcasts.

[Justin]

So Sean forced me to do it.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah. I think that's how we met was through Sean Terry.

[Justin]

Is that through Sean? I would. That would maybe. Can't clothe your one or two. Okay. Right.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

So I started mine in 2013. You started in 2011?

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah, I think Sean started his in 2010.

[Justin]

Yep.

[Joe McCullough]

And at that time there was maybe two or three other podcasts.

[Justin]

That's right. And Sean, because I was a big fix and flipper at the time, Sean was like, I teach wholesale. No one is podcasting about fix and flipping. Shocker. Science flipping. Right. And so I was like, all right, I'll do it.

[Joe McCullough]

Well, and he told me, you should interview people.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

And he said, you know, there was a fine. A popular book at the time called Stock Market wizards, maybe back 10 years earlier, but he said, you should do something like Real Estate Wizards. And I thought, I don't like wizards, but how about Real Estate Investing Masters? And so that's when I chose Real Estate Investing Mastery as the name of my podcast. And I started interviewing people, which nobody was really doing at the time.

[Justin]

Right.

[Joe McCullough]

And then a couple years later, John Lee Dumas comes in the scene, Entrepreneurs Aren't Fire. And he interviews people like every single day. And that just took off. And he sometimes takes credit for being the guy who started the interviewing trend or, you know, the. The idea of interviewing people for podcasts.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

But it was Sean Terry's idea, gave it to me. Yeah.

[Justin]

Well, I. I would tell you just because John Lee Dumas, my model, which you're familiar with, my podcast model, started because he gave me that. He, like you have the leverage in the audience.

[Joe McCullough]

He's a good.

[Justin]

Create a business out of your podcast versus just having a podcast.

[Joe McCullough]

Is he still doing it?

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

That's amazing.

[Justin]

I mean, to my knowledge, I was on his maybe two years ago, so.

[Joe McCullough]

Okay.

[Justin]

I believe so.

[Joe McCullough]

Good for him.

[Justin]

Well, for him, that's his revenue generating business is the podcast. And he was like, colby, why don't you do that? And I'm like, okay. Anyways, let's talk land.

[Joe McCullough]

Cool.

[Justin]

So, you know, most people think real estate transactions in single family assets, especially in the transactional. Right. The wholesaling, the flipping. They think single family homes mostly. Right. You've been able to find an avenue that all of us, including myself. Right. Would like to understand more of.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

What happens when you're direct mail, cold calling, buying leads, whatever the case may be, and you come across a piece of land, maybe it's a subdivision or infill lot, and then maybe it's acreage. We all come across them. What's the first thing you're thinking about, like, when you see land?

[Joe McCullough]

Well, I'm a simple guy, and I like to keep it small, Keep it all.

[Justin]

There you go.

[Joe McCullough]

I. When I. When I build businesses, I don't want a lot of overhead. I don't want a lot of complexity. I like to keep things really, really simple. So I had done a lot of wholesaling houses. And, you know, as we were talking about Ken Clothier, he taught me something once. He said, you need to stop selling what you have and start selling what people want. I thought that was interesting. And what do you mean by that?

[Justin]

It might have been the smartest thing he's ever said.

[Joe McCullough]

Maybe. Yeah, not too many things, but that was one of them.

[Justin]

That's it.

[Joe McCullough]

I'm just kidding. So, like, I started thinking about that, and he. He, at the time was teaching me, and I already done a lot of deals, but he was like, you need to start going to the buyers first. And he had a book, I think he's still out there, called Reverse Wholesaling. And so I read the book, and I've been wholesaling for five or ten years already, and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is so simple, but so brilliant. And so, you know, that was. That was 13 years ago about. Yeah. So ever since then, I've always been thinking about, where are the buyers? Where are they buying? So it's like if you're a fisherman, you know, where do the fish. Where are the fish in the water? What are they biting? So I really started studying what the buyers are buying. So when I look at land, I don't. I don't care where in the country it is. I'm just looking for where are the buyers buying land right now? So I don't suggest. If you're wholesaling houses in Miami or Des Moines, Iowa, I don't suggest adding land to your marketing in those markets, because how do you know if people are buying land there? Right, right. And. And so I look at the cult country, and I look at. Okay, well, and there's websites, like landwatch.com is a good place to start, and you can narrow down. Okay, well, these counties, there's a lot of activity. These states, there's a lot of activity. Florida's a big one right now. Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri. Believe it or not, a lot of people are buying land in southwest Missouri right now. And. And then you look at. Okay, which counties are people buying land in? And I like going after cheap land. Right. Because there's a bigger pool of buyers looking to buy cheap land.

[Justin]

Sure.

[Joe McCullough]

So, you know, in Nebraska or Iowa, there's not a lot of cheap land being sold there. Why? Because it's mostly agricultural. That's right. Montana. It's beautiful, but there's not a lot of cheap land there. So there's not that many transactions there. You know, I would. I'd love to own land in Montana.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

But that's not where the fish are biting. But the same with, you know, states like Vermont or, you know, Idaho. Beautiful states, but there's not a lot of land activity there. So I. I'm pretty agnostic. I don't want to go in my backyard. I want to go where the fish are biting. And I have the whole United States in my backyard. So I start with looking at what states are active with buyers recent and current. And I'm looking to see where are the investors right now?

[Justin]

Playing so where could someone right now go see that? Landwatch land watch. Okay.

[Joe McCullough]

Landwatch.com. and that's like, it's owned by land.com. it's a family of websites. That's. That's the number one website. Looks like Zillow for houses.

[Justin]

Okay.

[Joe McCullough]

Free land.

[Justin]

Easy to see where buyers are buying or transactions at least are happening. Okay.

[Joe McCullough]

And that gets you started. That's. Gets you, like. Okay, I pick out, like, two or three states, and then you can dive in there, and you can see which counties are the most active. I was just doing this yesterday in California, looking at California with one of my clients, and we were looking at San Bernardino county and Los Angeles County. Well, Los Angeles county is huge. Right. And you don't want. We like cheap land because there's a bigger pool of buyers.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

Excuse me. In the. Buying cheap land. But if you look at Los Angeles county, for example, there's a lot of wealthy areas there, very expensive real estate. And then you go further out towards the hills. A lot of cheaper land out there. So then what we do is we look at when we pick out our list of counties, maybe in each state, we get a list of 10 counties. What are the zip codes in each of those counties? So to dive into those kinds of details, I just go to Redfin and Zillow. So on Land Watch, I get a list of two, three, four states. And then in each of those states, I just write down the 10 or 20 counties, and land Watch allows you to sort them. So you can sort them from most active to least active.

[Justin]

Okay, that's great.

[Joe McCullough]

And then in each of those counties, you just go to Redfin or Zillow and you say, show me the number of solds in the last six months of just land. Yeah, so land is one of the houses. You know, there's houses, multifamily condos, condos. So you just do land. And I like to look for cheap land, so I'll typically look for land under a hundred grand or something like that.

[Justin]

Oh, really cheap. Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

And because those are the fastest and easiest to sell.

[Justin]

Okay.

[Joe McCullough]

And now we've drilled it down from the entire country to states, to counties, to zip codes. And one of my favorite tools is FreedomSoft. And FreedomSoft has a tool in there called ZipFinder. And that just makes it a whole lot easier. You can go right there and find the top zip codes. And then when we find those top zip codes, you know, sometimes in most of the counties in the U.S. redfin allows you to download whatever you filter.

[Justin]

Oh, no.

[Joe McCullough]

So Redfin Zillow doesn't. There's tools on Chrome where you. Their extensions where you can scrape what is in your filtered view in Zillow. But Redfin has a way where you can. If you scroll down to the bottom, you filter out, okay, last six months, land only under a hundred grand. And you'll see at the bottom, usually a little button called download all. And you download all of those trans those transactions into a spreadsheet. Well, you can take that spreadsheet and you can either on your own or just upload it to ChatGPT and say, hey, what are the most popular zip codes in this area? What is the median acreage that people are buying? And what's the median sale price that they're buying them at? And what's the median price per acre? Now, I don't wanna get too technical here, but, like, there's a difference between average and median, right?

[Justin]

Yes, there is.

[Joe McCullough]

So median ignores the outliers. Cause there's gonna be properties that are selling for a million dollars an acre. But so median takes that number right in the middle. And so now I know. Okay, cool. These zip codes are the hot areas where a lot of buyers are buying. And now I'm looking at what Ken Clothier said, find, sell what buyers want, not what you have.

[Justin]

Yep.

[Joe McCullough]

And then I know, okay, well, they want properties in this. And this is recent. Somebody was just asking me, well, you know, I've heard that in this area of Texas, you know, land is really slowing down. Some land investors are getting out of the business. And I. And they were wondering why. And I was like, well, maybe it's not in a good area. Right.

[Justin]

So.

[Joe McCullough]

And since I'm a wholesaling, I'm only going to areas where I'm going to be in and out of the deal really fast. So now I know the top zip codes. I know what they're buying and I know what they're paying for. And with some simple tools, there's a lot of them out there where you can find buyers. I know who the buyers are. And so 90% of my job is already done. Like, I know now what the buyers want, how much they're paying for it, where they're buying it and who they are. And I can then drill in what's real simple. There's a lot of tools to do this. Freedomsoft, again, is my favorite. I can see which buyers have bought the most land in the last six months, and a lot of them are out of state. These are guys, these people buying these lots, they're just investors like us. They're just wanting to diversify. A lot of times they're wanting to take their money out of the stock market, out of crypto and put it into real estate. Or maybe it's an area where there's a lot of recreational activities going on. So it's cheap land. People are buying it to maybe build a house someday or maybe just to put. There's no restrictions that they want to put their RV out there and yeah, just, you know, shoot their guns, go hide their guns and the government comes to take them away. You know, it just depends on who's in office.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

So it's like, I don't care. I don't care where, but I'm going to where the activity is and. And then that's where I start doing my marketing.

[Justin]

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[Joe McCullough]

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[Justin]

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[Joe McCullough]

Yeah, it's just like. So I used to do this with houses. I'd go to list source and there's a way in listsource where you can. Like before you buy the list you can say, all right, show me all the zip codes where the absentee owners are buying rental properties or buying properties right now. And it's really easy to find those pockets. And I just now am doing it for land instead of houses because I found, you know, land is way easier. There's less competition.

[Justin]

I think the key for me is the less competition.

[Joe McCullough]

Right?

[Justin]

We're all me, you and however many other educators are teaching people how to transact in the single family space. The multifamily space can be tricky because there's less of them. So even though there's less people focusing on them because there's less of them anyways, it's still very crowded. People just don't know what you know about land. I feel like to some extent it's a blue ocean.

[Joe McCullough]

Well, it's crazy because I used to do a lot of direct mail for houses. I've always loved direct mail. It's how I did my first deal. And I'm lucky if in a market that I'm doing deals in, like I used to do wholesaling houses in maybe four different states, I was lucky if I got half of 1% response rate on a letter right. Or a postcard. With land we're averaging 3 to 5%. That's great response rate. Now some competitive markets were maybe 2%, but it's still still four times greater than what I was getting with houses.

[Justin]

And you already know what the buyers are paying for. So it's such an easy conversation. What do you want for your land? They say X you look at, okay, the median purchase price is this can't quite get there. Like you literally just reverse engineer it.

[Joe McCullough]

And this is so cool because sellers with houses, owners of homes, they're more attached to the property. Right. They've lived there for 20 years where they put hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[Justin]

Into it and home ownership pride.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

And.

[Joe McCullough]

But with land, there's so much more removed. They're like, yeah, I just don't care anymore. And people ask me, why would somebody sell their land so cheap? Because we're buying it on average at about 40 cents on the dollar. And. And we sell it on average to a cash buyer at maybe 80 cents on the dollar.

[Justin]

So.

[Joe McCullough]

But people say, why would somebody sell their land so cheap? It's just. They just don't care about it anymore. It's like the same reason why I say somebody bought a treadmill for $2,500 and two or three years later, they sell it for $250 at the garage sale.

[Justin]

That's right.

[Joe McCullough]

They've never used it. And it's just collecting laundry and they just want to get rid of it. It's the same thing with land. Maybe they inherited it. They just don't want it anymore. I got so many stories of people that I've talked to. They're just like, I just need the cash. You know, we. We haven't been there in seven years.

[Justin]

We don't do anything with. It literally just sits there. It's just like the money's not working.

[Joe McCullough]

So I hate negotiating with sellers. Right. I just never enjoy. Enjoyed it. I can do it. I can get on the phone, but I just never liked it. And so with land, I started doing this where I would send out marketing, like postcards. The ugly. Remember the third notice postcards that we used to do back in the day? Right. I'm doing those now with land.

[Justin]

Okay.

[Joe McCullough]

And I'm getting huge response rates. But the basic. The postcard says, hey, we need to talk to you about your 2.6 acre lot in city County. I recorded a brief message. Just text or call this number and I'll tell you all about it. Nobody will answer. 24 hour recorded voicemail. So it doesn't even tell them why, you know, we're sending this postcard. And I have softened the language a little bit because it used to be really obnoxious. I won't get into the details, but I've softened the language a little bit on this postcard.

[Justin]

Sure.

[Joe McCullough]

And so I get a lot of calls, and some at the time when I started doing this, I would just before they. And they would. There would be a reference number on the postcard. So they would leave a voicemail and I would just send them an offer before even ever calling them or talking to them, I'd look at the property. I figure, all right, well, it's worth 10 grand. I'd send them an offer for four. That was it. And I would get one out of 30 accepted like clockwork. And they would sign it and send it back to me without me even talking to them. Sometimes they would call back and say, hey, I can't take four, but could you do five? And I'd say, well, I don't know, let me look at it, you know, and maybe I would. Or sometimes I'd say, I can't do 90 days because I do 90 days. Close. I can't do 90. Can you do 30? Maybe. It depends. I don't have any inspection contingencies. I have 90 days of close and 90 days of due diligence. And I can cancel it for any reason.

[Justin]

I was just going to say the big key for us and the, you know, single family home, we always have this inspection period. Yeah, but there's an asset. Right, that makes sense.

[Joe McCullough]

So.

[Justin]

So there is no inspection. I mean, it's bland. Like, what do you.

[Joe McCullough]

Right, but I. My contract is contingent on due diligence.

[Justin]

Okay. That's it.

[Joe McCullough]

That's it. That's all I put on there. I don't do any earnest money deposits. Maybe you're supposed to, but I don't. And so, you know, I. At. As soon as I get it under contract, that's when I start doing my research, my due diligence. I call a bunch of realtors, I call other buyers to see if there's any interest, to see if I actually have a good deal. We send somebody to go take a picture of it, like drone footage. And then typically now we just close on it. We take it down, we buy it, and then we list it with a realtor and sell it. It used to be I just did assignments and maybe some double closes. Yeah, but now you make more money when you. If you can take it down and we're buying these things, you can put them on a credit card. You know, you're buying them for five or ten grand and you're selling them for a five to $10,000 profit. Once in a while we get a big $20,000 deal.

[Justin]

But yeah, so for someone getting into the space of land, limited funds, or just getting going, you and I know the newer side, they don't tend to have a big marketing budget. Where would you tell them to spend their money or time? Where would you tell the newbie to go? Focus.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah, two things Cold calling works great.

[Justin]

It's funny because land process, you kind of reverse engineer it, and then you go find all the land, and then you just.

[Joe McCullough]

You download lists from the same resources. You get list for houses, right?

[Justin]

That's right.

[Joe McCullough]

You get the list, you skip trace it, and you could just start cold calling them. I would suggest starting with that. The second thing that I love is working with realtors. So we go find house or vacant lots that have been on the market for over six months, and there's tons of them. Why haven't they sold yet? They're just overpriced. And so I love to call, and I do this all the time on my YouTube channel. I'll call realtors live and say, hey, I'm looking at this property. It looks like a nice property. You know, what's going on? Can you. Can I ask you some questions about it? And most of the time, they've forgotten all about it. Like, oh, well. Oh, yeah. So I said, looks like a nice property. How long has it been on the market? And I know because it's. Oh, it looks like it's been six months, man. Something wrong with it. What's going on? Why isn't this sold yet? And nine times out of 10, it's like, well, it's just overpriced, you know. But I start to build a relationship with the realtor. I don't necessarily think I'm going to get that deal under contract, but I want to build a relationship with that realtor because I want them to know, number one, I don't have an agent representing me, so they can get both sides of the commission. And number two, if they ever bring me another vacant lot like this one, and they. And they have a client, he just wants an offer, a cash offer. I'll pay them 10% commissions.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

And they're all of a sudden like.

[Justin]

Oh, well, it is huge. Right? That's so different than. Than residential real estate.

[Joe McCullough]

So, you know, with tools like Redfin, I just. I can show them. I can say, dang, you know, this. It's listed for 25, but I'm looking right now, did you know there's like, another property a mile away that's listed right now for 15? So I don't know, like, how negotiable is your client on their price? Like, and then I look at solds, I just. It's really easy in Redfin to switch to sold. And I say, oh, man, there's some soldier that sold six months ago, similar size for five grand. So how negotiable is your client's not in a hurry to sell this thing. Right. I mean, in a perfect world, I would need to be at around five grand to buy this thing. That's. I know. It's not going to work, is it? And usually the realtors, because by this time I've already told them I want to pay you a bunch of money if you bring me deals.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

And I live in St. Louis. They know I don't live in Florida. And they're like, well, you know, listen, just email me an offer and I'll send it to the client.

[Justin]

Right.

[Joe McCullough]

And so at that point I'm just, I'm getting their name and number, I'm getting their email address, and I'm saying, listen, if you ever find another property out, like an off market vacant lot that I can buy at a good discount, I'll give you 10% commissions, which is big.

[Justin]

You know, I tell my students all the time it's about the realtor, not the listing.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

And it's funny. Us old schoolers understand the relationships more impactful than the actual listing itself.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

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[Joe McCullough]

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[Justin]

So when talking to whether it be listed with an agent or maybe you're talking to a homeowner, what type of questions are you asking? Because in our world, as you know, like we're talking about condition of the home, we're talking about the neighborhood. Is it owner occupied neighborhood? Is it tenant ridden neighborhood? That kind of stuff, right? So land can be different. Like what are the typical questions you want to ask a realtor or a homeowner in that case?

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah, the main one is access. Okay, can you get to the property? Is it landlocked? Because sometimes if it's landlocked, I'll still make an offer, but it's going to be like 500 or a thousand bucks or something. Just really, really.

[Justin]

People buy landlocked land.

[Joe McCullough]

I I've sold lots of landlocked land to neighbors, to other people that know how to get access, legal access to it.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

There's some states that, where you, you're required by law to have access to whatever land you own, but you have to go through a legal process to do it. And that may cost money, but there. So that's why, you know, I, many times when I'm making an offer on a landlocked property, I'll tell the seller I'm not going to be the guy to buy this, but I might be able to find somebody else who buy it.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

So I need, you know, I need three to six months. I, so I'm honest with them, I'm telling them I, I'm a wholesaler and I, I'm going to try to find somebody else that will buy this from me and if I do, then I close on it. But to answer the question, what are you looking for? Road access is the main one, right. Either actual road access or legal access. Because sometimes there won't be a road but you know, it'll be applauded, you'll see the road. The other thing is wetlands and floodplains. You know, is it wetlands or. Now I have wholesale a lot of land that is three months out of the year underwater. And, and people still buy that land because it's close to. There's an area up northern Florida where there's a lot of spring fed, spring fed rivers and people buy land up there just to bring their motor home and then go drive a half mile down to the river to go floating down the river with the alligators or something. Right.

[Justin]

So I don't know why people sound enjoyable.

[Joe McCullough]

No, but people do it.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

So. And, but they don't care. They're not going to build a house on there. So anyway, access, floodplain, wetlands. The other one is like the terrain, the slope, you know, if, is it super steep? Is it pretty flat? So that's important to know and that's all these things aren't deal killers. But like, it's crazy. There's a saying in land. There's a pig for every barn. Because you may think who would on earth would want to buy this property?

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

But you know, a neighbor might. I've heard stories of, of where like somebody bought, they got a property under contract, not realizing it was on the side of a mountain, but they sold it like that to a bunch of rock climbers that, that wanted their own property where they could go rock climbing.

[Capella University Voice]

Wow.

[Joe McCullough]

Mountain climbing up this, up the side of this mountain.

[Justin]

So in, in our world, in real estate, I try to always help people understand. Don't prejudge your buyer. So the deal that you think isn't a deal, a lot of times there's one call that will come into that. They're going to say, I want it. So I'll give you a perfect example. My world, you're familiar with it, but a property in a great neighborhood, but it seems like it's a little overpriced. Like there's not a big margin to it, but it needs updating. In our world, the mail formula won't work for that. It seems like you're going to be paying too much. But you go and say, you know what? I don't want to prejudge a buyer who might remodel the home themselves. Yeah, there's a buyer out there that can't get a property in this hot neighborhood. It's undervalued for the neighborhood. And they'll do the work. And I can't tell you how many. I'm sure you've done the same thing in the residential space. Like, you find one buyer, you have one call, you sell the one call, and you make a money because you're not prejudging your buyer. Same thing with land is what you're saying is like you have cliff climbers that are. Want this land because now they have their private access to these rocks and whatever. Don't prejudge the buyer. And kind of what you learned from Kent, which is like, don't sell what you have. Sell what they want. Yeah. I think that's a major thread of information people need to understand both in land and in real estate.

[Joe McCullough]

Well, it makes everything so much easier.

[Justin]

Right.

[Joe McCullough]

Because, you know, they're buying land out here and. And anything will sell at the right price. Yeah, you can sell anything at the right price. And so that's the cool thing about land, because there's not so much competition, there's not a bunch of other YouTube university wholesalers chasing these, you know, these, these few owners, homeowners here.

[Justin]

And let me plug you real quick. Go to Joe's YouTube, by the way. Go to anything he has, because if you want to get more information on this.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

You need to go follow Joe. He's. This is why he is here. So, uh, what's Instagram, YouTube? Let me plug you so people know where to find you.

[Joe McCullough]

Well, just, just go and search for Joe McCall.

[Justin]

Okay. Joe McCall. MCC A L L. Yes, thanks. Yes. Okay, so I have a question regarding that. What about infrastructure? Like does that. Do you care really? Obviously a cliff ridden thing doesn't have any infrastructure. There's no.

[Joe McCullough]

No, I don't care. I really don't. Sometimes you can go too deep into analyzing a property. And here's again why I do 90 days. Because I let the mark sometimes. You know, land is harder to comp than houses.

[Justin]

Sure.

[Joe McCullough]

Because there's fewer of it and you can't filter by square foot or number of beds or when it was built or whatever. But with land you just gotta take your best guess sometimes. So it never takes me longer than five minutes to analyze a property. And I'm always conservative and I'm like, all right, well conservatively I think I could sell it for this in one or two months. I want to be in and out real quick. And then I subtract my numbers and I never offer more than 50% of what I think I can sell it quickly for. That's right, in one or two months.

[Justin]

And in speed, for sake of speed, remind everyone I bring you 1, 2, 3 Main street or the address. What's the fastest way for them to find that value again? Redfin.

[Joe McCullough]

Redfin and Zillow.

[Justin]

Zillow. And just go look for like kind land properties in a general area.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah, yeah. So like I've got a bunch of YouTube videos that teach that. I also just in the last week. You've heard of Manis IM? It's a. It's agent. You've heard of agentic AI?

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

Okay. That's where you use AI as like an agent to do stuff for you. Manus IM M A N U S.IM is one of those agentic AI tools. Yeah, I started geeking out over it one night and I had it build a chrome extension for me for Zillow. So you go to Zillow and you search for your property. Right. And you get it in the center of that map and you set your filters for land and solds in the last 12 months and between one and five acres or whatever. And you zoom out until you get like 20 comps and you click my extension, it'll scrape all of the comps. And you do that for solds and actives and pendings. Right. And it'll scrape all of these and then give you a median price, an average price per acre, median price per acre and all that. And then you can say all right, only show me the cheapest, the lowest 50%. And it filters out and shows you the lowest 50%. And then you say all right, so based on. And I You'll see a median price per acre for actives and a median price per acre for solds. Right. And so I just choose the lower of the two.

[Justin]

Yep.

[Joe McCullough]

And then it calculates based if my property is two acres, it tells me what that property might be worth. And then I subtract all my profit. Ten grand profit, 2,500 in closing costs, a thousand dollars for unknown, and 500 bucks for photos. And it gives me a number to offer, and it tells me if that number is more or less than 50%, and then if so, it's cool. I don't know anything about code. Nothing. And I started with, hey, this is what I want to do. And I was typing this to Manus, how do I do it? And at first it said, well, that's against Zillow's terms and conditions. You can't just go and scrape stuff off their website. I said, well, but is there another way to do it? And then it said, well, yeah, you could create a chrome extension. You know what a chrome extension is, Right. So I said, okay, well, how do I do that? And it walked me through. And like 57 versions later, I got this thing that's actually works and you can export it into a spreadsheet. And it's really cool. I'm going to be using it as on, like, pretty soon on my YouTube channel. I'm going to be showing how to use it and giving it away for free.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

So I use tools like that.

[Justin]

Yep.

[Joe McCullough]

When I'm evaluating properties. So I put in the address or address of a similar property nearby. I get it in the center of my Zillow map, and then I set my parameters and I zoom in or zoom out until I get 10 or 20 comps.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

And then I just look at price per acres. So they're going to be properties, all different sizes, and I get like an average or a median price per acre, and that's how I determine the value of my property. See, the reason why I love this is because I wanted something I could do with my teenager boys. I got four kids right now. My oldest are 21 and 20. And then I have girls that are 17. Jeez. And 14. But my boys, when they were 14 and 15 years old, they wanted some extra money to get a car.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

And. And we were traveling a lot at the time, so they couldn't get jobs. Like, we were traveling to Europe for months at a time and whatever. So I said, well, let's do land together. And this is really one of the main reasons why I Got into land because I wanted to do something with my boys. And my boys at the time, they're good kids, they're smart but you know, I didn't want to train a 14 year old kid how to talk to some 80 year old lady who owns, has been living in this house for 30 years and try to get them to understand how to estimate repairs and the ARV of a property and then to learn how to negotiate with sellers, you know. And I just said let's, let's figure out a way to do this where it's like just transactional, it's just like systems and automation.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

So that's when I developed a system of let's find out where the buyers are, let's send them postcards, let's send them to a voicemail. So my boys started listening to the voicemails a couple times a week would listen to the voicemails and then they would go with to Zillow to find all of these comps and I gave them a spreadsheet and they would figure out what the property is worth and without my supervision. Eventually they would just send offers. They would send the offers themselves to the sellers and we get 1 out of 30, 1 out of 40 adopted. And with my boys because I was doing deals on my own as well at the time we, they did over $151,000. $151,000 in profits.

[Justin]

Wow.

[Joe McCullough]

On these deals I only paid them 15% profit. Right. But yeah, they both were able, not nice cars but they were able to get, you know, good 10 year old.

[Justin]

No, no. Deserves.

[Joe McCullough]

No, not at all.

[Justin]

I don't care how rich you are, they don't deserve it.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah. So it's so easy.

[Justin]

Now. That's great. And so the, the thing that I want everyone to really hear is you take genuinely if you're just doing Redfin, less than five minutes comping a property.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

And you just do like kind acreage and you zoom out until you have 20 comps or so.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

You say okay, this is what we're selling at. And you take the bottom third and say okay, I need to be closer into this bottom third. I mean that's the simplicity. I mean that's man, you're making me really want to get in the land just because it is simple.

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[Justin]

So I have a kind of interesting question. One, I have a really good friend that does a lot of mineral rights and oil rights in Texas.

[Joe McCullough]

And so probably too.

[Justin]

And he crushes it.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

So what if you come across that or when you come across that, how do you handle it?

[Joe McCullough]

I don't. Because, like, that's. I don't. I like to keep things simple.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

So. So I. What I do, though, is I find the guys that are doing those.

[Justin]

Sure.

[Joe McCullough]

And I bring the deal to them. I say, hey, I got a deal here. Do you want to partner on it?

[Justin]

So if you had a deal in Texas, you would call my buddy. Which I'm happy to actually make this introduction. He was a student of mine and he has a whole mineral and oil company.

[Joe McCullough]

That's complicated.

[Justin]

It is.

[Joe McCullough]

And. But that's why he's killing it. Because every. It's intimidating everybody else like me.

[Justin]

That's right.

[Joe McCullough]

So we're just bringing our deals to him.

[Justin]

And you know what's interesting is he reverse engineered this company. He said he came to me because he was like, I already have the Baseline Mineral Oil Company.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

I need more access to more land and opportunity. And so let me hire you as a coach so I can get into the real estate side of it. And so now he's crushing it because he runs this wholesaling transactional. And anything he comes across that has this.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right.

[Justin]

It's always like, dude, it's a feeder funnel to the bigger business, which is the mineral and oil. Right.

[Joe McCullough]

So let's talk offline.

[Justin]

Yeah, sure.

[Joe McCullough]

But so that happens all the time. Right. Like you come across. Every area has kind of things that are unique to it. But I, I'm, I join as many different real estate investing Facebook groups as I can. Like every market has their own little Florida, south Florida real estate investors, whatever. Right, right. So I'll join all of those that I can. And there's also a lot of local buy sell trades groups, Facebook groups in areas by county or by city. And so a lot of times I'll put something on those Facebook groups. Hey, I got this. 5 acre lots of. Has anybody ever done a deal in this area before? And you'll find people there that are, that are doing deals in that area and I'll, I'll tell them, I say, hey, listen, I, you know, I don't have time to mess with this. You want to partner with me on it? I already got it under contract and yeah, I'll do some kind of a JV agreement with them on the side.

[Justin]

Sure. So even if you guys make 10 grand, you give them five, it's the same as everything and it just reduces your friction. You don't have to work as hard. You give away half, but who cares? So the other, the other thing I'm thinking about is I'm literally contemplating how I put this into my business. Acreage, do you care? Right. So I have a student that does land entitlement. So he wants, when he goes after land, he wants certain acreage. Like he doesn't want to have a two acre thing. Right. He wants 20 plus. That's his model. Do you care? Do you try to.

[Joe McCullough]

There's a really cool tool called the land Portal and there's some other tools that do this, but the Appke brothers, I've met them once or twice, really nice guys, they have a tool called land Portal. And the cool thing about that tool is you can go into a county if you want to do entitlements or subdivide, you have to have a certain minimum road frontage to do that with white. Right. So you can have one or two entrances, you know, so what they do with their, they've used AI to, instead of just trusting the categorization from the county that this is vacant land, they use AI to look at the satellite image and to see if there's a structure on it or not. And then that will tell it it's a vacant lot. Right. And then it also, you can say only give me properties that have road access, that have at least 100ft of road access. That is 10 acres, 20 acres or bigger that is no more than 25% wetland. That has at least 85% of the property below a certain slope, percentage slope. And so it's pretty crazy. You could really narrow down and you.

[Justin]

Don'T really target anything like that. You just kind of go, simple is better. More is better. Yeah, yeah. So like I feel. Or acreage you just kind of go after.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah. So that's important to really think about that, though, because if I'm targeting Charlotte or Lee county in Florida, for example. Right. Because I see there's a ton of activity there. I just go to Redfin and I say, well, what are the people buying? And I remember I talked about, you download that list and you can see most people are buying quarter acre, little infill lines. So that's what I'm going to target. People who own quarter acre infill lots. I'm just going to say, give me all of the landowners that have owned it for over 10 years between this acreage size and this acreage size and don't live in the area. So I can say out of zip code. And that's the only filtering that I do.

[Justin]

So easy.

[Joe McCullough]

I get as many as I can and I just mail 500, a thousand.

[Justin]

Postcards a week or calling, you know, or call. So the other thing I was thinking about, so when I was doing a lot of infill lots in Phoenix, we were getting like, our buyer typically was either a spec home builder of some sort. And so they would usually buy it around anywhere from 10% or 25% of value of finished product. Right. Is that still the same 10 to 25% of value of finished products of the homes, 500 grand, they're willing to buy the land for, give or take, 100 grand.

[Joe McCullough]

No more than. Yeah, between 50 to 100 grand.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Joe McCullough]

And it's the same kind of thing. And so when I get a deal under contract or when I'm making an offer, I kind of look to see, all right, well, what are similar transactions in the last six months? What are they selling for? And the first, when I get under contract, the first. First thing I do is I call at least 10 or 20 realtors that have sold land there before recently, and realtors who have new home construction builds. And I asked them, I said, is your client who built this house, are they looking for more land?

[Justin]

That's right.

[Joe McCullough]

And those. I love working with realtors. They make your job so much easier.

[Justin]

Tell the newbies that it's okay. I don't know.

[Joe McCullough]

I used to be afraid of working with realtors. But they're amazing. And, you know, with all of these new wholesaling regulations coming around. Right. It's getting harder. It's illegal, immoral, and fattening to wholesale anymore. So just take the deal down, work with realtors, and have them do the work of selling for you.

[Justin]

All right, so you have a challenge. You do. Regarding. Because there's a lot of content. There's a lot of questions that I wasn't able to ask right here on this episode. If someone wants to know more, they can do your challenge. Flip dirt. Challenge.com correct?

[Joe McCullough]

Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Every week we run this challenge, and I dive deep. So I talked a lot of, like, technical stuff here, but I show how to do it, and I show how to do it with free tools, premium paid tools. I show free marketing and cheap marketing. You know that chrome extension thing I talked about? I give it away in the challenge.

[Justin]

That's great.

[Joe McCullough]

So it's. It's fun. We go in and we just teach you how to pick a market, how to do marketing, how to make offers, how to find the buyers, and it blows people away. How simple it really is. And. And I. I love doing it.

[Justin]

Yeah. So if you don't get everything you want from this episode, go to flipdirtchallenge.com Take Joe's challenge.

[Joe McCullough]

Yeah.

[Justin]

Hey, dude. Thank you very much for showing up. This was incredible.

[Joe McCullough]

Appreciate it, Justin. Thank you.

[Justin]

All right, so if this is pretty cool and you think there's a couple people that want to be able to flip some dirt, then I would tell you to share this episode with at least two of your friends who think this is a pretty cool episode. We'll see you on the next episode. Peace.

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