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(intro)

(intro)

Welcome to The Gold Collar Investor Podcast, with your host Pancham Gupta. This podcast is dedicated to helping the high-paid professionals to break out of the Wall Street investments and create multiple income streams. Here’s your host Pancham Gupta.

Dave Zook

Hey, this is Dave Zook. I listen to Pancham at The Gold Collar Investor Podcast. And so should you.

Pancham Gupta

Welcome to The Gold Collar Investor Podcast. This is your host Pancham. I really appreciate you for tuning in today. Today’s guest is Brent Bowers. He is an investor and coach with a focus on buying and selling vacant land. As an army officer with over 80 years of service, Brent was spending a great deal of time away from his family. He knew he needed to make change in order to be more present with his wife and children. Brent began investing in real estate as a way to support his family while having more time to spend with them. In a short period of time, Brent was able to expand his business, hire a team, and still had more time to spend with his family. Brent now helps other investors learn the ins and outs of buying land.

(interview)

Pancham Gupta

Brent, welcome to the show.

Brent Bowers

Thanks for having me, Pancham. I’m so glad to be here.

Pancham Gupta

Yeah, absolutely. We could have done this live. We were chatting before the show that you’re not that far away from where I am in Florida now. Welcome. Before we get started, are you ready to fire up my listeners break out of Wall Street investments?

Brent Bowers

I am so ready. I’m shouting from the rooftops about this. If I can do it, the guy that barely got through high school, anybody can do this. So, let’s go.

Pancham Gupta

Awesome. Well, let’s start with your background. Tell us about how you got started into this business and your background.

Brent Bowers

Yeah, I’ll tell you. It was by necessity. My first marriage ended in divorce. I was in the military. Always gone. Always away. My second deployment to the combat zone in Afghanistan, me and my wife ended up separating because I was gone all the time. Well, fast-forward several years later, I met the beautiful woman of my life, my dreams. We got married. We started having babies. And guess what? History was repeating itself.

My life was just going down the drain because I was so engulfed in working my W2 job and just going where I was told to go every day, and dressing how I supposed to dress, and being told what to do. But I was always gone, and I was so scared. So, I had a huge why. That was to be able to quit my day job, be able to spend more time with my family, to make more money, to have financial freedom and time freedom. So, no, I didn’t have to actually go and do everything everyone else was telling me to do, but what I wanted to do. I found land investing, and I’m here to talk about it today.

Pancham Gupta

Awesome. I love your T-shirt. It says land. People are watching on YouTube. So, let’s talk about that. Thanks for sharing your background there, a quick background. So, how did you get started? You had one unsuccessful marriage, and then second one. You saw the writing on the wall and you were like, “You know what? I have to change something.” And you did. How did you find out about land investing? How did you get into it? For someone listening, what was it? Was it a book? Was it a mentor? What was it?

Brent Bowers

It was a little bit of everything. Thank God for podcasts. Because if it wasn’t for podcasts like this, I would not have found land investing. I was searching for answers like a rabid dog. I was looking, I was listening to podcast. My car going to and from work each day was my mobile university. Because I didn’t have a college degree. I tried college; it didn’t work out for me. I just determined that, okay, if I’m in my vehicle, I’m educating myself. But I also had a second element to that. After the education, when I parked my vehicle, I’m going to take a minute, just one minute, to write down the action step I’m going to implement. I’m going to — next, I’m going to schedule that. So, it took one minute to do that. It was on one sentence.

When I heard about land investing, I heard it on a podcast. The guy that was talking — I don’t know what podcast it was. I would love to give credit. The guy was talking about doubling his money pretty much in a very short amount of time, like a week. He bought this parcel of land, and sell it for more. He would make, sometimes, double, triple, quadruple his money. My sentence was: start investing in land today. So, that night, I went home and got the tax delinquent list — the land owners that were not paying their back taxes, the land owners that were saying, “Hey, I no longer want this land because I am not paying my taxes for it.” That was screaming to me. Hopefully, they are motivated to talk to me. I started mailing a postcard, a very simple postcard that said, “Hey, my name is Brent. I’d like to buy your land at 123 Main Street.” Here’s the thing: most land parcels do not have a physical address. So, I would say Landon, El Paso County, Colorado. “If you’re interested in all cash fair offer, call me or text me. God bless you, Brent.”

If anybody wants a copy of that postcard, just go to thelandsharks.com/postcard. This postcard I purchased, I would say, at least over $3 million worth of land. It’s just been incredible. It changed my life. It got the phone ringing immediately. So, by taking that action step, now I had to fail forward. I took violent, imperfect action. Did I make a lot of mistakes? Yes. Did it take a lot of work? Yes. Were there some sleepless nights? Yes. But you have to start taking action. We can’t just listen to all this gold of information. We have to act on it as well.

Pancham Gupta

That is so true. I mean, action. I’ll tell you real quick. My background is engineering. So, I did go to school. I did get a degree. A lot of my listeners, they work. They have W2 jobs or they’ve done higher education where they’ve done their masters and stuff. In engineering, there is something called analysis paralysis, right? We, engineers, we have this thing called analysis paralysis where we analyze anything to that. We’ll listen to all the information in the world. We’ll do all of those things, and then we get so paralyzed after this analysis that we don’t take action.

What you’re saying here, your message is that you took that little two minutes after every drive and write, one minute to write down your action step. Then you actually did it. I always say that if information was the only thing missing, then everyone would be having six-pack abs. Everyone knows that they have to — you have to eat healthy and go to gym. Simple, as simple as that.

Brent Bowers

I’m still working on the six-pack abs. I actually ate brownies for breakfast this morning. That right there, I started failing first thing Monday morning. Every day I say, six packs will come tomorrow. Six packs will come tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll start eating healthy. Tomorrow I’ll get rid of the brownies in the house. I mean, kind of. I cooked them last night, so I can’t get rid of them, get them out of the house.

We have to focus on today, because tomorrow always comes. There’s always going to be another day. Hopefully, God willing to leave you on this earth. But we have to take action right this second. Throw the brownies in the garbage. Get rid of the Coca-Cola in your house. Get rid of distractions. Throw your TV in the trash. Sell it. Sell your TV for $50 so you can send out those first mailers. That’s like 100 mailers.

Pancham Gupta

Right. Exactly. So, let’s talk about that. You sent this card out to all the delinquent people on their taxes on this land. I’m assuming there’s a way to get that list somewhere. Then once you have that, and you get your phone call, what happens next? Walk us through a typical deal. You get a call from me. Hey, Brent. I have this land. Or, thanks so much for sending me this postcard. What’s next here?

Brent Bowers

Yeah, let me just tell you. Not everyone is super nice when you send that $0.41 postcard. Sometimes they call you, and they’re just rude about it. That’s fine. You just have to know your numbers. This is all a numbers game. I take it back to dating in middle school. I wasn’t dating in middle school. Let’s just say, my middle school example when I had to find a girl to go to the dance with me. I knew if I asked 4 girls, sometimes 10, I would get one yes. So, I just had to get three nos to get that fourth answer. Hopefully, it was a yes. It’s just a continuous number thing. 99 out of 100 landowners that you speak to are not going to be willing to sell you their land at a crazy massive discount.

But let’s talk about that, that first land deal that I bought. I had mailed this list of tax delinquent land. I actually thought it was just a regular tax delinquent list. I made a mistake. This was the county held tax lien list. The county treasurer in Colorado — it was El Paso County in Colorado — they sent me their county held tax lien list. They thought I was going to pay the back taxes and get a return on investment for my money. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t. I was in credit card debt back in 2016. Plus, I didn’t have time. I was working 12 hours a day for the army.

When I sent out these 687 postcards — I told your audience how to get this postcard — my phone started ringing. Because these people were so far behind on taxes, they were basically about to lose their property any day. But most of this land was inefficient. A lot of it was not buildable because it wasn’t big enough. A lot of it was not accessible. You couldn’t get to it ingress, egress because it was landlocked. There were so many things.

Literally, I bought a crater in the ground. That was a huge mistake. We’ll talk about that later. I still made a little bit of money off that one. But that first landowner that called me and said, “Hey, Brent. I’m a retired CPA. I traded for the land many years ago. Some tax work I traded for the land. It’s yours for $285.” Come to find out, that’s exactly what he owed in back taxes. He just wanted to get that monkey off of his back. He wanted to get rid of that burden. So, I said, “I don’t know anything about this land. But let me go look. Is it okay if I call you back after the weekend?”

I went and looked at it. I went and took photos of it. I didn’t know what it was worth. It called the real estate office that was just down the street, almost a mile away. And guess what? The realtor made an offer to me. She said, “Look, if you’re going to buy this land, I’d love to buy it from you.” I said, “What are you offering?” She said $5,000. I said, “Let’s do the deal.” Because I was buying it for $285. A week later, I had my $5,000 check. It worked.

Pancham Gupta

Wow. That’s awesome. Let me ask you this. A lot of engineers are analyzing and listening right now, and they have this question. Why did this retired CPA not go out and talk to that realtor or any other realtor to list this land and sell it himself?

Brent Bowers

Yeah, let’s talk to the engineers right now. I am obviously not an engineer. I take massive, imperfect, violent action. Then the effect happens. I paid for the results basically. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s bad. But life is cause and effect. So, why did this guy do it? He just wanted to get rid of the land. He had paid for the back taxes for many years. The land was not buildable, because there was only one ingress and one egress. The fire department wouldn’t allow people to build on the street. So, this guy saw no value in this land. But here’s the thing: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. So, where this guy didn’t see value, I saw value, as well as the real estate agent that purchased the land from me saw value. So, we have to stop asking ourselves why do people make the decisions that they make. There’s a variety of different reasons.

Let me talk to the men right now. Men make decisions because we want our wives and our girlfriends to be more sexually attracted to us. We want our children to look up to us. We want our parents to be proud of us for what we’ve accomplished. We want to be respected in our community. So, if you figure out why people make the decisions they make or what’s driving them, you can help them to do that. Why did the CPA do it? Because I was a convenient option. He was older. He didn’t want to have to deal with these back taxes anymore. He didn’t see value in this land, where I went and drove to this land. I sat on this land. I brought my wife and my newborn son. I just couldn’t believe how beautiful it was because it was overlooking the Pike National Forest. It told me. I was like, if I can buy this land for $285, if I get stuck with this land, now that’s going to suck because I had to buy diapers when we get home. They’re like $800 million for diapers now. Thank God we no longer have diapers for our kids. We’re past that stage, I should say.

But we have to stop asking ourselves why. We got to see the value. The value was, one day, the city might allow them to put a road over the railroad tracks. Now this land is worth $500,000. They’re not making any more of this stuff. They’re not making any more of it. The reason why the smart money on Wall Street, the people I’ve been seeing in the news since elementary school like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, this is why the smart money is buying land right now. It’s a finite resource. They’re not making any more of it. You can step on it. It’s tangible. It’s not cryptocurrency. It’s not stocks that literally some CEO can make a decision that now my stock is worth nothing.

Pancham Gupta

Got it. Well, that’s awesome. Just out of curiosity. Do you know what happened to that land, the very first one that you bought and sold to that realtor?

Brent Bowers

I do. That land on that same street now sells for $50,000 a lot. It still does not have that road over the railroad tracks. That realtor was pure speculation. She sold it. She made money on it. But here’s the thing: that gave me confidence. Because I didn’t think this worked because I heard some guy on a podcast. Most people are full of crap. Actually, we’re all full of crap. But I got proof of concept. I was no longer in analysis paralysis. I take the action. Then I analyze by saying, okay, I sent out 687 postcards. I did four land deals. Each one is maybe about $5,000. So, I have now have a gross profit of 20 grand. I spent $150 on postcards. Not a bad return on investment for that.

That’s me talking to the engineers. If you look at numbers, it’s like, okay, for every time I send out 687 postcards, I make $5,000. I’ll spend that $150 to make the $5,000. Then you just accelerate that process. Before you know it, you can quit your job because the next one turned into a note. The next one I sold on seller financing that paid me 400 a month, that’s the one that lit my fire.

Pancham Gupta

I want to talk about that. But before we get there, that particular example, let’s talk about — to anyone who has become an accidental landlord where they bought a house and then they moved, upgraded into a different house and they rented it, and they see the value in renting homes, or people who are investing in multifamily or any kind of residential real estate, how is land investing different from that? Yes, there’s no tents to manage, toilets to repair, and trash to take care of. But there is no passive cashflow here. How is it different from investing in single or multifamily or any other residential real estate?

Brent Bowers

When you invest in land, you are profitable from day one and forever. Now, it’s not always the same thing with houses. My first house, I purchased in 2007. I rented that house out. For nine years, I owned that house. I never ever, ever made a net profit on it. Because we can set our watches. Every six months, something’s going to break. A septic system went out, the roof started leaking, the dryer stopped working, the water heater stopped working. Every couple of months, something broke. I was only netting $200 a month on this property. $200 a month, if you have a $2,000 repair, do the math.

I don’t know if that math adds up. I think it does. For 10 months, I’m not profitable for this house. I sold it nine years later for the same price that I bought the house for just to get out from underneath it. There’s always something to repair and fix. What do I mean when I say the statement from day one and forever profitable? Now, from day one on that first land deal I talked to you, it was profitable. Actually, it was profitable the next day. Because I paid the seller on Tuesday and got my $5,000 check on Wednesday the next day, less than 24 hours later.

Land deal number two, I purchased for $500. Now these are very small land deals. Because I had to build my confidence up. I’m doing much larger land deals right now. It’s like a step ladder. It’s like, okay, now let’s do a bigger one. They turn into million dollar deals very easily. But I didn’t start there. I needed to build my confidence. I was not confident in this. I was not a business owner. I’m not an engineer, so the numbers were hard for me. But that second land deal, I bought for $500. I sold it on Craigslist for $500 down and $400 a month.

When I sold it, I had the buyer lined up before I even paid the seller. So, I paid the seller that day $500. I got the deed in my name and then collected the buyer’s $500 down payment. Then the following month, 30 days later, I was profitable because I got this $400 a month payment. That’s why it’s forever profitable. Also, from day one, because we’ve lined the buyer up first. We get our security back out of the land, because that $500 is now back in my bank account. And now I’m getting consistent income. I can do this multiple times. Before I knew it, nine months later, I’m sitting at little over $5,000 on month coming in in land payments. Well, my expenses were $4,400 a month at that time in 2016 as a brand-new army officer. So, I was able to quit my job because I had more coming in each month than what was going out.

Pancham Gupta

Wow. That’s awesome. That makes me feel like going into the land deal. I want to understand from you. To anyone listening, you mentioned that you bought this land for $500. I’m assuming you got that land by the same trick of sending these postcards out. Someone called you, and you made that deal happen. But then, on the side, instead of going to the realtor office next door, you basically posted an ad on Craigslist which said, hey, I had this land available for $500 down in whatever interest rate or what price as a seller financing, basically, right?

Brent Bowers

You got it. And a couple of photos, a little bit of information about the land. And I had a buyer within a week.

Pancham Gupta

Wow. To anyone who doesn’t understand seller financing, can you quickly go over that, what that means?

Brent Bowers

Basically, how I seller finance this land. There’s a couple. There’s really two ways to do it. I kept the deed in my name. I was the registered owner with the county for this land. Then I gave my buyer what’s called a land contract or a contract for deed that said, hey, if you pay $400 a month for this long at this interest rate, once you pay it off, you can pay it off early. There’s no prepayment penalty. None of that stuff. Once you pay it off, I’ll transfer the deed in your name, and you’ll be the new landowner.

Now, the other way to do it is you can sell the land through a real estate agent. Then we go through a title company. And then I give them what’s called a mortgage and a promissory note. Some states call it a deed of trust, depending on what state you’re in. But basically, I become the bank. It’s called a seller carryback. I’m getting payments now. If you don’t pay, I got a lien on this land. I’m in the first position. I will take this land right back from you via foreclosure.

There’s a couple options that you can do for it. What’s so amazing about this is, I’m getting the land for a discount. Then I turn around and sell it to a buyer for exactly what it’s worth, full retail value. I’m not giving them a deal. But I’m offering the ability to make payments. Americans think, “How much is going to cost me each month?” They don’t look at the total price. They look at, “Okay, what’s my monthly payment going to be?” So, they’re more willing to buy it quick because this guy is offering financing, and this guy’s not.

Pancham Gupta: Yeah, that’s awesome. This reminded me of a discussion I was having with my partner, the very first car deal. We both are immigrants. We came here in early 2000. The very first car deal, we go to the car dealer and go, “Hey, we’re going to buy a car.” He’s like, “How much payment do you want to pay per month?” What does that have to do with the price of the car? We’re asking you the price, and you’re asking us how much we’re going to pay. It goes back to what you said. My partner told him, “Hey, we can pay $5,000 a month, but we want to pay zero. Can you please tell us the price of the car?” It’s like what you said, that people think in terms of how much they can or they can afford to pay every month, and not the actual overall value. So, that’s awesome. You have done, how many? You started in 2016, you said, doing this?

Brent Bowers

Yep. 2016.

Pancham Gupta: 

How many deals have you done till we’re recording this, 2023, for the record?

Brent Bowers

I have 69 land payments coming in right now. So, that gets us paid about twice a day from land notes right now. Land notes, basically a note is basically a mortgage where someone has to go to work, so they can pay me each month for their land. Actually, last time I checked, we’ve done over 312 land deals. Some we’ve sold for cash, quick cash. Some I didn’t even buy because I didn’t have the money. So, I would get the land under contract. I’d get a purchase agreement for it, and say, okay, the land is worth $10,000. I’ve got it under contract for $5000. Then I go put out a bunch of signs, put out my real estate ads on Craigslist.

My dad has sold 50 land deals, 50 land parcels on Facebook marketplace and buy and sell groups. He put some ads up there and just say, “Hey, here’s the land at 123 Main Street. Yours for $7,500.” So, we take that purchase agreement we have. We have it under contract for $5,000. It’s worth $10,000. We get someone to pay us $7,500 for it. We keep the difference of what we have under contract for and what our buyer is paying. So, that’s a $2,500 difference. You can do the same thing with $100,000 parcels of land. We have it under contract for $50,000. Our new buyer, Bob, the buyer, pays $75,000. So, we now keep a $25,000 assignment fee. I’ve done this with the banks. I’ve gotten land under contract from banks that have taken it back via foreclosure. I had it under contract for 25. I sold it for 38. It made the difference.

Pancham Gupta

Wow. So, let me ask you this. All these land deals that you’ve done, are they all in state or you ventured out? I know the first one you said you went to the land. You drove. I’m assuming you’re not driving through every single piece of land now, right?

Brent Bowers

No way.

Pancham Gupta

Yeah, so, what do you do now? You get these calls. How do you evaluate land when you’re not physically going there?

Brent Bowers

Yeah, that’s a great question. So, now I find the land specialists realtor. They are so easy to find because you just go on Redfin. You go on zillow.com. You look in that area, and you see the land that’s sold in the last three to six months, and you click on those. If it’s on Zillow, it’s yellow dots. If it’s on Redfin, it’s red dots. You just scroll through and say, “Oh, you know what? This one was listed by Larry, the realtor. This one was bought by Bob, the realtor.” You start looking at each one. You click on each one. Eventually, you’ll see a pattern. Man, Larry is the guy that’s listing all the land in this area. He must know this area. This must be his farm area. He must know that this stuff like the back of his hand. Then you get a piece of land on A street. A street, it has water and sewer and power right at the lot line. But once you get to D Street, same neighborhood, there might not be sewer and you might have to drill a well. That land is worth a little bit less. Larry is going to know that insider information without you having to figure it out. This was a game changer for me. Because now, guess what? My realtors are teaming up with me. They’re partners, because they want to sell this stuff too. I don’t have to go and do these Craigslist ads, and these Facebook ads and all these signs. Now, Larry has a buyer’s list as well. These buyers are always looking for land on A street. By the way, they love if you sell or finance the land to them as well, and allow them to make payments. They’ll put a down payment. Sometimes the down payment equals what I’m paying for the land.

Pancham Gupta

Now you kind of hired these other state realtors to sell the land for you, do that, all the work that you were doing. In return, they get some commission on that land from you.

Brent Bowers

Exactly.

Pancham Gupta

Okay. Awesome. Well, this is some great info. I’m assuming you’re doing this full time now. You have a team. How many states have you done this in, so far?

Brent Bowers

Oh, geez. Colorado, Florida, Arizona. I have so much land in Arizona. Me my wife just buy land all over the country now. We hold on to some of this stuff. It’s pure. It’s one of the best investments. I don’t have to repair anything. I never get calls from tenants over the middle of the night because their toilets won’t flush. Pennsylvania, Indiana, Arkansas. Seven states now at this point.

Pancham Gupta

Okay. How do you keep track, making sure that you’re paying your current on the taxes? You’re not getting issue that you actually started with your donors. How do you do that compliance level stuff?

Brent Bowers

Yeah, thank God I have an assistant that checks the mail. I also have an in-house accountant, or she’s rarely my bookkeeper. But once a year, yeah, it’s a sad time of the year. I have to pay those tax bills. But here’s the thing: we collect it from our buyers. So, if the tax bill is $1,200 a year, I collect the $100 a month from my buyer. Now, you want to make sure you know your state rules. Some states, I’m pretty sure most states, you have to have a separate bank account for that. But here’s the thing. As long as you’re paying those taxes, no one really cares as long as the taxes are paid.

So, we get all these bills, usually, twice a year from the county treasurer or the tax collector. And you’ve got to pay those taxes. In some areas, you can wait three years. We don’t play that game. I know some land investors will just keep the money, keep working it and using it. It’s better just to pay those things because they start stacking up all these interests and fees as well if you don’t pay them right away.

Pancham Gupta

Right. Okay. Cool. I think I have one more question for you, and then we can move on to the second part of the show. My question is this: any tips that you have for first-time land buyers who are considering — after listening to you and getting motivated, and they’re like, “Damn, Brent started in 2016. It’s been seven years. He’s done over 300 deals and has done 69, you said, current payments that you’re getting.” That’s quite awesome — and they want to dig in, what advice or what tips you have for them?

Brent Bowers

Yeah, just start taking action today. Start looking for an area where land is currently selling. That’s going to show you where the demand is at. It’s going to also allow you to be able to comp the land, see what it’s actually selling for and figure out what it goes per square foot or how much it goes per acre. But start taking action today. It’s an action step each day. I hate to put out those numbers 69 land notes and 300 plus deals. But 2016, there was none of that. I didn’t have any of that. I just had to take action.

My first action step was getting that list of people that were not paying their back taxes. I started my own backyard. You can do this virtually, if you like. Some of my students — I have students that I teach how to do this. They do it in their backyards. And they make a fortune. I have some students that only do it out of state. They absolutely make a fortune as well. Some guys are doing it from Germany and Canada. They’re buying and selling the land in the United States. So, there are so many ways to do it. But you just have to take a little action step each day. Then before you know it, these things compound on this stuff. These daily wins add up to where you make $22,000 a month in land payments. It all stacks up. Now I have people like my mother-in-law and other friends, they want to lend me the money at super low interest rates. So, now it’s like I’m building capital where I can buy bigger, better land deals.

Here’s the thing: if I have 150 land buyers or just one, it’s the same amount of time. It’s not like buying 100 rental houses. Rental properties, oh, my goodness. I have a couple. I still have a few of them. Just one house last week, I had to replace a sewer line and a furnace. The sewer line was $7,000. The furnace was almost $6,000. Now they’re saying the house needs gutters because the house is starting to lean. It’s caving in. Now we have foundation problems. I’m just like, oh my gosh, this is one rental property. I couldn’t have imagined having 69 of them.

Pancham Gupta

Man, that’s quite awesome. So, let’s take a quick break and we’ll be back for the second round.

(break)

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the thought that you have no time after work and find no time to learn about investing? Do you feel left behind that you are not putting your money to work for you? Do you want to create passive income, but you do not know where to start? If so, I have good news for you. I have created an investor club which I call the Gold Collar Investor Club for Accredited Investors. I will be putting together investing opportunities exclusively for this group. These are the opportunities where I have done my part of the due diligence for you and will be investing my own money alongside you.

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(interview)

Pancham Gupta

All right. Brent, let’s move on to the second part of the show. I call this round Taking the Leap Round. I ask these four questions to every guest. My first question for you is, when was the first time you invested outside of Wall Street?

Brent Bowers

Okay. So, the first time I ever invested outside of Wall Street was in 2007. I bought that first rental property, which I had mentioned on the first round. I bought that property. It was a first-time homebuyer’s program. I would say it was more of an investment in my education to figure out how a rental property worked and who not to rent my house out to. Because I had to do a couple of evictions. It got trashed. It actually gave me a lot of stress in my marriage because I got back from that first combat deployment in Afghanistan for one year and had to evict the tenant. Then I had to use all my savings to fix this house back up, so we can rent it out again. That was my first investment. Not the best investment but it gave me a great education. The road to success, I believe, is through the gutter sometimes.

Pancham Gupta

Yeah, I hear you man. Cool. My second question, did you have any fears that you had to overcome when you bought that property?

Brent Bowers

Heck yeah, I was afraid. Because I didn’t know if it was going to work out. What if no one wanted to rent the property from me? What if the tenant trashed it? What if I lost my job, which I did, and I can’t pay for this house anymore? So many fears. But here’s the thing: you figure out a way. Tomorrow’s answers will come tomorrow. There’s a reason why our headlights only go out like 300 feet. It is because we don’t have to see so far. We can’t see around corners. But you walk around the corner, and there’s the answer.

Pancham Gupta

Yep. Cool. My third question for you, can you share with us one investment that did not go as expected? I want to hear about that. Whatever, you mentioned something. There was a crater or something in one of the lands.

Brent Bowers

I won’t talk about that one because it wasn’t that cool. But it was probably my fifth land deal. I got this land for $300. It’s another one that was behind on taxes. I ended up having to work with this sweet lady. Her husband passed away. Her husband was a builder. They used to own a bunch of land in a mobile home park. Actually, it was it was not a mobile home park. It was a mobile home lot. You can only put manufactured homes in this area. It was the last lot left in Fountain, Colorado.

Well, we worked together. We opened up the LLC. So, she can legally sell me back the land. Well, I was moving so fast. I had my army job. I was moving so fast. I wasn’t doing proper title research and getting title insurance. I ended up getting a quitclaim deed for this land. I had a buyer that was paying me $16,000 for the land. I already had my buyer lined up. Well, that buyer realized that there was $157,000 IRS tax lien on this land. Plus, it was a treasurer’s deed. So, basically, the title was clouded basically for nine years. I couldn’t figure out how to work through these situations. I held on to this deed, this quitclaim deed. It was in my black filing cabinet, which I still have today. The lady kept calling me. I was so scared to take her calls, because I didn’t know what to tell her because I didn’t have the answers.

I found a coach about a year later that was doing a lot of land deals. I hired that guy. I paid him one-on-one. He coached me. This is what I paid for that coaching. He goes, “Try again. Because sometimes, these IRS tax liens fall off.” Well, as a tax lien fell off, it did. And I also found the right title agent by talking to another real estate investor in the area. I said who is the best title agent in this area that can figure out all the problems? They gave me Tammy Thomas with Heritage Title. Those two things changed my life. Now, the grain at the city kept piling more fees on because of the lawn mowing. So, I ended up having about $3,000 in this land deal by the time everything was taken care of. The IRS tax lien fell off. I found another buyer that gave me $5,000 down. So, I was profitable from day one. Then they paid me $538 a month for roughly 51 months. She just paid the land off last week. We already sent the deed to go in her name. I made $32,200 off of that land deal that cost me $3,000. Roughly, $29,000 in net profit on a deal that I thought was so screwed up. I thought it was garbage. I didn’t think I was going to get anything from it. But hiring that coach and finding that title agent salt all the issues. Now, you know what that land is about to sell for today? About $98,000.

Pancham Gupta

Wow.

Brent Bowers

Even if I didn’t sell it, I would have a $98,000 asset still on my hands today.

Pancham Gupta

That’s cool, man. That’s cool. Not as bad as you expected. But it’s great.

Brent Bowers: 

Never is. Nothing is ever as bad as we think it is, ever.

Pancham Gupta

All right. My last question for you, what is one piece of advice would you give to someone who’s thinking of investing in Main Street that is outside of Wall Street?

Brent Bowers

Get educated and start taking action today. I have all these books right here in my library. We have these libraries all over the United States. The answers are already there. We just must take action. It helps to hire a coach. However, you might not have the funds to do that. Start taking action today. Find an area where land is selling. Get a list of landowners, and mail them that postcard. It could be tax delinquent list. It could be just the regular old landowner list. If you want to get a list really easily or if you want to get a list right now for free, go to thelandsharkslist.com and pull a record of 50 landowners in the area where land is selling, and send them that postcard. Your phone is going to start ringing. Start having conversations with landowners today.

Pancham Gupta

Awesome. Well, thank you, Brent, for your time here today and giving your wisdom to the audience. How can listeners connect with you if they want to find out more about you and what you’re up to?

Brent Bowers

Yeah, check me on my TikTok channel. I’m doing a video each day on land investing how to make money in land. @brentlbowers1. If you want me to hold your hand and teach you the actual land investing business, the exact systems to use, the steps to take, go to thelandsharks.com and schedule a call.

Pancham Gupta

Sounds good. Brent, thank you for your time.

Brent Bowers

God bless. Thank you so much.

Pancham Gupta

I hope you guys enjoyed the show with Brent Bowers and got his perspective on buying vacant land. I truly got intrigued by his approach. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to email them to me at p@thegoldcollarinvestor.com. That’s p@thegoldcollarinvestor.com. This is Pancham signing off. Until next time. Take care.

(outro)

Thank you for listening to The Gold Collar Investor Podcast. If you love what you’ve heard and you want more of Pancham Gupta, visit us at www.thegoldcollarinvestor.com and follow us on Facebook @thegoldcollarinvestor. The information on this podcast are opinions. As always, please consult your own financial team before investing.

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