Travis King buys and sells land. He also teaches other investors how to buy and sell land.
He’s flipped land in 29 states and has done over 400 transactions personally and more than 100 JV deals with his mentorship students.
He had been a house investor, until the ’08 crash wiped him out like a tsunami hitting a sandcastle.
For the next five years, he dinked around with side hustles, but nothing really took off.
Then he stumbled across land flipping, which he and his wife Becca have been doing ever since.
“What we really do is we pull data sets (marketing lists) and then we do outbound marketing campaigns,” Travis explains.
“Primarily direct mail. But we also cold call and text message as well. But really what we’re doing is we’re trying to identify off-market land owners who don’t have their properties listed for sale,” he continues.
“And then we’re trying to buy their properties for 50% to 75% discount. So we’re capturing anywhere from 50% to 75% of equity. And then we’ve got options, right?”
“So, when we get that under contract, there’s a couple different exit strategies.”
“You could flip the contract like a house wholesaler – assign it to another investor or developer and collect your assignment fee.”
“Or you could buy the property outright and then list it with an agent and sell it for full market value. That’s primarily our play.”
“And there’s kind of two product types if you will. Plots of land in metro areas that you sell to builders; and then you’ve got rural vacant land – coupla hours from the city,” he says.
Over a decade of dealing dirt has taught Travis and Becca it’s best to pursue both. Otherwise, say you’re only going after buildable lots. Well, what happens when markets change?
Like right now, with interest rates a lot higher, builders are pumping the brakes. So that product’s much harder to sell for a profit. Rural vacant land, on the other hand, sells well even in down markets. There’s more use cases. Maybe it’s recreational, maybe somebody wants to build a cabin, maybe it’s for a future retirement dream home.
Either way, cool thing about land, Travis points out – you don’t have to be local. They never visit any of their dusty rectangles in person. Instead, they’ll get an agent in that area to walk the property.
What about price? Is there a sweet spot you should be looking for? Well, because most land flipping courses teach their students to shop for inexpensive plots (like $30k or less), that’s where all the competition is. So by targeting more premium plots, Travis and Becca have been able to clean up like a pack of wolves on the hunt for a meal.
And yeah, full transparency, nobody’s super excited to sell their plot of land that should be worth $100k – for half off.
But it’s a numbers game, Travis counters.
You send 10,000 units of direct mail – and make cold calls till your vocal chords start smokin’ – and you’re gonna get a deal.
FYI: as a rough ballpark, Travis typically spends about $5k on marketing to make back about $20k on a smaller deal; and about $8k or so on marketing to make back $50k+ on a bigger deal.
Of course, before pulling the trigger on a property, there’s a buncha due diligence you gotta do.
Last thing, if you’re buying these plots outright, where do ya get the money?
Private lenders. Find yourself a sugar daddy, you do all the legwork, chop the profits.
How can Travis help?
He’s got a free seven-day Land Flipping Challenge you can sign up for.
From there, he’s got a Land Flipping Mastery course he sells for $2,497; a Land Boss eight-week group coaching program that costs $4,997; and a Land Boss Mastermind for $12,997.
I like Travis but loathe the model. Too risky, too slow.