There are so many strategies that you can use to build capital through real estate, but it all comes down to team, execution and mentors. Known as “The Land Geek,” Mark Podolsky is widely considered to be the country’s most trusted and foremost authority on buying and selling raw, undeveloped land. In this conversation with Chris Larsen, Mark shares his journey from the corporate scene and into the world of buying, selling, and leasing raw land as an investment.

Mark has actively invested in real estate and raw land for almost twenty years and has completed over 5,000 unique transactions in that time. Mark breaks down every step real estate investors must follow and all the ups and downs to be taken into consideration.

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The Land Geek With Mark Podolsky

You are not going to want to miss this show with The Land Geek, Mark Podolsky. He’s going to talk to you about his proven method about how to buy land and earn 300% returns, whether you are getting started or you are looking for a way to build up your passive income with a real estate strategy.

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Our guest is known as The Land Geek, Mark Podolsky, is widely considered to be the country’s most trusted and foremost authority on buying and selling raw, undeveloped land. Mark will share his journey into the world of buying, selling and leasing raw land as an investment. He is actively invested in real estate and raw land for many years. He’s completed over 6,000 unique transactions in that time. Mark, welcome to the show.

Chris Larsen, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

I’m excited to have you on. We talk about a lot of different types of investments and real estate but we haven’t talked about land yet on the show. I would love for you to tell the audience why you are known as The Land Geek and your history of how you’ve got here.

Why I’m known as The Land Geek is I’m geeky. I love software and automation. The way I’ve got involved with it was, I was working as an investment banker, doing mergers and acquisitions with private equity groups. I had a 45-minute commute to work and back. It was stressful, long hours. I was micromanaged. That had got so bad for me. I wouldn’t get the Sunday blues anticipating Monday coming around. I get the Friday blues anticipating the weekend going by real fast and having to be back at work. My firm hires this guy. He’s telling me that as a side hustle, he’s going to tax deductions. He’s buying up raw land, pennies, dollar. He’s flipping them online and making a 300% return on his investment.

I’m looking at companies all day long. A big, great company has 15% EBITDA margins or free cashflow. Average companies have 10%. I’m looking at companies all day long less than 10%. I don’t believe him. We go to New Mexico. I do exactly what he tells me to do. I buy 10.5-acre parcels with an average price of $300 each and $3,000 is all I started with. That’s all I had. I’m saving for car repairs. I flipped. I made an average of $1,200 each. It worked 300%. I took all that money. I went to another auction in Arizona where I live. This is $2,000 there in the room. I buy up lots in acreage for nothing. Over the next six months, I sold all that land. I made over $90,000 cash. I said to my wife, “I’m going to quit my job and become a full-time land investor.” She was pregnant. She was like, “No.” It took about eighteen months for the land investing income to exceed the investment banking income. I have been doing that ever since. I have done over 6,000 deals. I love it.

You’ve got me beat by one year. I started in ‘99 with my first real estate deal but I have not done 6,000 deals. That is awesome. We are on the way. I want to dive into a bunch of different stuff. I left the corporate world myself in 2021 to do real estate full-time. A big mission of the show is sharing information so others can do it. My path, your path might not be someone else’s path. It took you about a year to do that. Talk a little bit more about how long you are in the corporate space and your mindset from leaving that. What gave you confidence over that year?

I had been working for that company for about five years. It was in ‘99 that I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. After reading that, the light bulb went off like, “I need to do this. I can do this. I can buy assets.” It motivated me. I remember having 1 foot in and 1 foot out and thinking, “How can I do this? How can I work my land business full-time and still keep all the benefits of my job?” I tried to negotiate a deal. I said, “I can do consulting for you. Keep my health benefits.” They were like, “Either all in or you are all out.” I was scared, nervous and sick about it. I’m like, “I’m going to go for it. I was all out.”

What I didn’t realize was I looked at all the things I was going to be losing from the corporate gig. I was going to be losing a steady paycheck, my health benefits, the sense of security, some identity capital. I would go to parties because I’m an investment banker. I didn’t realize all the things I was going to gain. All the energy and enthusiasm I have had for me in my business, I completely discount it until I started doing it. I’m like, “This is way better.” The colors are more vibrant. Food tastes better. To be able to work when I want, where I want, with whom I want, I didn’t even know how much better it would be. I’m proud of the fact that I have had a similar conversation with a bunch of clients and friends who were on that suppressive. “Should I quit?” I’m like, “Do it. You don’t realize you are going to be able to put into your current gig to make that grow that you don’t have the time for.”

A lot of my coaching clients are earning a similar position as you were. They are in a similar position that I was over the past couple of years where they say, “I like what I’m doing but it’s burning me out.” I spent eighteen years in the medical device industry. My MBA is in Portfolio Management. I spent a lot of time researching finance, investment banking. I chose an area that I could blend my nerdiness, my geekiness in medical devices and the body. I was an undergrad in Biomechanical Engineering. I thought, “What a cool space.” If you are reading and you are not one of my colleagues from the medical device industry, you may not know this. If you are a medical device rep, you are in the OR, on-call, you are at the whim of the doctors in the hospital schedule.

They can call you out of bed at 11:00 PM, which by the way, is the worst time to be called out of bed because then you are there all night. It’s way better to be called at 3:00 in the morning because at least you get 4 or 5 hours of sleep. It wears you out. I know investment banking is very similar. It’s high stress. There are a lot of pressure to perform on a day in and day out basis. That’s why I love real estate because it’s a nice compliment that you can build up these passive income streams and these other options. You mentioned one thing in there that I would like you to touch on. It was the identity. I’ve got to the point where our passive income with our family was at a great spot. I was also making some active income from some of our other deals. What I figured out was that wasn’t what was preventing me from leaving. It wasn’t being scared of the financial part. It was being scared of being relevant.

It is a real thing. They called it an identity quake. Your whole world is shaken up when you thought you were. The stories you told yourself are completely different. You have to adjust to the new reality. It takes some time. It’s scary to shed that. In a way, it’s almost like a death. Unfortunately, a lot of people are afraid to go through it. It’s almost like a chrysalis. You’ve got to struggle to get out of that and grow. All of a sudden, you are this butterfly. You are flying but you don’t get to be that butterfly until you have gone through that struggle. For us, it was more psychological because we had already had proof of concept that our real estate investing model worked for us. We did go through that struggle psychologically with identity, then we are fine.

Especially if you are in something that’s high pressure, high need, you feel like people need you. If you are reading, I will tell you that I was scared to death to go through this process. After doing it, I found it exactly what Mark said. You have this renewed energy. It’s energy internally but also external energy. It’s interesting what happens. The doors start to open. If you are going through that process, feel free to reach out to us. We would love to share some more on that. Let’s dive into land versus real estate. If you could compare and contrast. Our specialty is multifamily syndication. We are buying cashflow properties. We are controlling the appreciation on the way up. We are selling them on the way out. Some people that are familiar with what we do might hear you say, “I’m buying roll in.” They were like, “That sounds risky.” Tell us what the differences are, positive and some of the potential downsides.

Let’s say it’s $10,000. We are going to divide by four. That’s going to get me what Warren Buffett would call a 300% margin of safety. I’m going to send you an actual offer of $2,500 contingent upon due diligence, taxes and you accept it. Why? It’s because each month, the county treasurer is sending you a notice. “Chris, if you don’t pay your property taxes, you are going to lose this property to a tax lien or tax deed investor.” For you, $2,500 is better than nothing. In reality, 3% to 5% of people accept my “top dollar” offer. Now that you have accepted it, I’ve got to go through due diligence or this in-depth research. I’ve got to confirm you still own the property. Back taxes are only $200. I have to make sure there had been no breaks in the chain of title, no liens or encumbrances and something is compelling about the property. It’s the access. “How far from services? What can I do out there? What are the restrictions?”

I have this whole property report. I outsource that to my team in the Philippines. It costs $5. They are connected to an American title company. At the same time, I’m getting the plat maps, aerial maps, GIS maps, everything that my new buyer is going to want to know as well. I’m creating my marketing package. Once that’s done and everything checks out, I’m going to buy the property. It’s only $2,500 I will self-close. It won’t go through a title company. If it was $5,000 or more, I wouldn’t take that risk. I’m going to close their title company. I own the property. I’m going to sell it in 30 days or less. I’m going to make a cashflow like one of your units. What am I going to do? I’ve got to dope in the best buyer. Do you know who it is? It’s the neighbors.

I’m going to set up a neighbor letter saying, “Here’s your opportunity.” Protect your privacy. Protect your views. Know your neighbor. Oftentimes the neighbors will buy it. I will go to my buyers’ list. If my buyers’ passes, I will go to a website called Craigslist, the tenth most trafficked website in the United States. I will go even smaller on Facebook, the marketplace and groups. I will then go to Landmodo.com, LandsOfAmerica.com, LandAndFarm.com, Landflip.com, LandHub.com, all these platforms where people buy and sell raw land. Maybe you go to Zillow.com.

The way that I can sell it so quickly is I’m going to make it irresistible to my next owner. I’m going to say, “Own this 10-10 parcel for $2,500 down and make it a car payment for $449 a month at 9% interest over the next 84 months.” Money out on a down payment, I might go 6 to 10 months out. I will make a car payment for $449 a month, 9% interest in the next 84 months. I have no renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents because I’m not dealing with a tenant, I’m exempt from Dodd-Frank RESPA and the SAFE Act, all these owners real estate legislation. The game we play is, “Can we create enough of these landowners where our passive income exceeds our fixed expenses?” We have not only solved our money problems, but we have also solved our time problems. We have total freedom.

You remind me of a strategy I read about when I was starting my real estate career by Lonnie Scruggs. He was the mobile home guy.

It’s Deals on Wheels.

I had that little paperback book. Is he still alive?

He passed away. I like his model because you are still dealing with something physical. He would owner finance.

I saw him at a meeting. He had to be 70, 80 or 90 years old back then. That was many years ago. He would say, “Buy wholesale, finance retail.” That’s what you were talking about. If you were reading, catch that nugget that Mark had said, “Buy wholesale, finance retail,” that’s phenomenal. Frankly, after dealing with tenants for years in some way, shape or form, I love the sound of not having to deal with tenants and have it in raw land.

The geeky part of you is going to like this because we’ve got 90% of the business automated with the software on the frontend and backend called GeekPay.io. It’s a collection system where they make their down payment via credit card and then we collected each automatically. It does all the notifications and the accounting. We also have inexpensive virtual since we were running the business. I spent about one hour a week in the business managing it. They were looking at numbers. It’s a chain.

You taught us. If you have checked out our website NextLevelIncome.com, our mission is to help people achieve financial independence through education and also through opportunities. Education is something that we connect on here. Share a little bit more with the audience if they say, “That was cool.” What’s your model for teaching others how to do this? How can people learn the next steps with respect to that?

The land is the most boring niche in the world. It’s unsexy. You can go to HGTV or DIY Network and see flip this land, the before and after pictures of raw land. You’ve got a head around this whole model. You will agree that the best way to learn anything is by doing it. We have a $97. It’s called Wholetailing: How To Double Your Money in 30 Days or Less? I would love to offer it to your readers for free. We can start doing it, learning it at the same time. Think of TheLandGeek.com/quickdeals. They can start taking action on it and see if this model even resonates with them. I like to tell the multifamily people. This is a great gateway drug into doing those bigger multifamily deals. Build up your cash reserves and your confidence in real estate. I started with $3,000. I’ve got clients that start with $500. You don’t need a lot of money to start. You can start building up your cash reserves and have that confidence to go into these bigger deals.

I stole Ray’s tagline about the Holy Grail of investing. That’s my book subtitle, which is multifamily, The Holy Grail Of Real Estate. I call it that because Ray Dalio says, “If you can increase returns and decrease risk, you have found the Holy Grail of investing.” It’s a lot of great stuff. I enjoyed talking to a fellow geek here on the show. I love your title, The Land Geek. We have talked about how the land can help you build your cash pile if you are getting into real estate initially. How it can be a great low-risk way to go in and double, triple, quadruple your money. Mark shared some of his golden nuggets. He even offered his $97 course for free.

They could also get the Kindle book for $0.99, Dirt Rich.

Mark, thank you so much for everything you are offering here to our audience, not only during the show but also in those resources.

Thanks, Chris. That’s easy to do.

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I hope you found this episode valuable. I have one more thing to give to you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Check out NextLevelIncome.com/coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I will send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for reading the show. Also, please like, share and take 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.

Important Links:

• Mark Podolsky

• Rich Dad Poor Dad

• Craigslist

• Landmodo.com

• LandsOfAmerica.com

• LandAndFarm.com

• Landflip.com

• LandHub.com

• Zillow.com

• Deals on Wheels

• GeekPay.io

• EPA.gov

• Bridgewater

• The Holy Grail Of Real Estate

• Dirt Rich

• NextLevelIncome.com/coaching

• TheLandGeek.com/quickdeals

• Apple Podcasts – Next Level Income

About Mark Podolsky

Mark’s company, Frontier Equity Properties, LLC, is an A+ rated BBB real estate company. Mark has achieved this level of success largely due to his core business philosophy – “Happy Customers Guaranteed.”

Mark is the host of one of the top rated podcasts in the Investing Category on iTunes aptly titled The Best Passive Income Model and The Art of Passive Income. He is also the host of the Land Geek Podcast- Work Smart. Earn More. Learn How.

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Tagged: land investment, multifamily homes, flipping houses, identity quake, corporate world, cashflow properties, Group 2