Mark Podolsky Archives - Page 3 of 11

I understand, it sounds too good to be true, right?! I mean, you can buy property for $500? $100? Even $50? And all you have to do is pay a little bit of back tax?

In 2001, for some weird reason, I wasn’t as skeptical as I probably should have been. So I started doing what these infomercials used to say late at night, send out letters to people who owe back taxes and offer them fifty bucks for the property. The infomercials promised that you’d be snatching up all these properties for pennies!

Well, guess what? It didn’t work. But I did find through a ton of trial and error, a system that actually did work. There is a target market out there and a system that if applied and done correctly, people will accept your offers. Now, it may not always be a steal at $50, but it will be for pennies on the dollar. The key is to find the right seller, with the right mindset, at the right time. That’s the secret I have discovered. Through the system I’ve developed and laid out in The Investor’s Toolkit, you will be able to start acquiring properties right away after learning the secret formula.

The Investor’s Toolkit is a system that works every single time. It is a step-by-step blueprint. All you need to do is take the effort to say, “Okay, here is my list. This is a targeted group of people that I know are in a position to accept my offer. Out of these 100 offers, I’m going to get at least five deals out of that target market. Out of those five deals, I’m probably going to make $15,000 to $20,000. If I can do that every single month, I’ve got something.”

It’s all about understanding the systems and methods I’ve developed; starting your own land investing business, developing your niche, and generating a passive income begin with The Investor’s Toolkit.

In this episode of the Best Passive Income Model Podcast, Mark chats with THE Brandon Turner from BiggerPockets.com.

Brandon is an active real estate investor and the VP of Growth and Communications at BiggerPockets.com. He’s been actively involved in real estate since he was 21 and is totally and fully in love with the whole business.

Listen in and discover how sexy Brandon Turner thinks flipping raw land is!

Thank you for listening to The Best Passive Income Model podcast. Your support helps me attract great guests who share knowledge that you can use to grow your business.

If you’d like to help out the Land Geek Community, please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Tip of the week:

Brandon: The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone, The One Thing by Gary Keller, and The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.

Mark: Learn more about Brandon at BiggerPockets.com/ubg and check out his book, The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down!

Bonus Tip: Check out this beginner’s guide to real estate guide from NewSilver.

Join Mark Podolsky, The Land Geek, and Seth Williams from REtipster.com as they discuss how to sell properties that haven’t been moving quickly. It can be stressful when a great piece of property or real estate just sits there! Listen in and see how Mark and Seth help move investments quickly.

Want to learn how to flip land? Get The Passive Income Launch Kit today for $7.00 ($97 Value) at http://bit.ly/1E6KIOu

Thank you for listening to The Best Passive Income Model podcast. Your support helps me attract great guests who share knowledge that you can use to grow your business.

If you’d like to help out the Land Geek Community, please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on
iTunes.

Be sure to visit Seth William at REtipster.com!

I have been investing in raw land since 2001, and the question I hear all the time is WHY? Why would someone lose their property? How do they get to the point of losing a great piece of property that I can buy for pennies on the dollar and turn around and make a HUGE profit on it?

Too often, people think there must be something wrong with the property. Why else would anyone let a valuable piece of property go? The truth is, that is almost never the case.

There are a lot of reasons why somebody would lose their property. Maybe they are going through a costly divorce. Maybe they live out of state and they are never going to use that property. Maybe they bought it for speculation like a legacy investor and then decided, “You know what? This is just a big mistake.” Maybe unfortunately, their parents died and they inherited the property and they actually have no emotional attachment to it and they get the tax bill and think, “This is not an asset. This is a liability. We are never going to use this property.”

There are lots of reasons someone would lose their property. There are as many reasons why people don’t want a property as there are people. There is typically nothing wrong with that property, the owner simply views that piece of land as a HEADACHE. Not only can you make a HUGE return on investment with buying and selling raw land, but time and time again you will discover that you are actually helping out the seller by relieving them of their headache.

If you’re ready to dive in and learn the ins and out, from start to finish how to buy and sell raw land, then be sure to check out The Investor’s Toolkit, it’s where I explain my entire method, giving away ALL my secrets and I even include copies and templates of all the paperwork and contracts you will need to start a successful land investing business yourself.

There are five important departments that you need to really understand when you first get started in tax delinquent investing in order to begin buying property pennies on the dollar. You are going to consistently use these five county departments, especially the first three.

The first department you’re going to need to know really well is the county treasurer. Your county may have a different name for it but basically, this is the department that collects property taxes. In The Investor’s Toolkit, I share with you the exact letter that I use to contact the country treasurer to get the list of people that owe back taxes, in the format that we need. Get to know the county treasurer really, really well.

The second department is the county assessor. I’m sure you’ve received property notice evaluations in the mail for your house or other types of real estate that you have owned and this is from the county assessor. The assessed value is always a percentage of the market value. It may have nothing to do with what a property is really worth.

The key thing the assessor also has are plot maps. Plot maps are simply those maps that are going to help you locate your property. So when you are doing your research, go to the county assessor and find out if they have the plot map for that subdivision or that area that you are interested in researching. The county assessor is critical when you are doing your mapping and your research.

The third most important county official is the county recorder. The recorder, obviously, records all the legal documents for that property. They are going to record any liens, including IRS liens, and any types of encumbrances on that property. You can really dig deep into the recorder’s office and do your own virtual title search.

Most recorders today have all this information digitized to make it real easy but there are still some counties out there that are in the process. So you want to know the recorder really well. After you sell your property, you are going to record all your documents with the county recorder and get to know their fees.

The three most important county departments are your treasurer, your assessor, and your recorder.

Now the fourth department in the county is going to be the mapping department. If the assessor doesn’t have the plot maps or the subdivision maps that you need, the mapping department will. They will typically charge $5 to $20 for those maps. So if the county assessor can’t help with your mapping needs, the mapping department can.

And then finally, the fifth department is planning and zoning. If you buy property out in the city, you want to know about the zoning, right? It will be residential or commercial, and if it is in the city it is not going to be agricultural. But if you are buying on the outskirts, it could be zoned agricultural. You want to know these things. You want to know exactly what you can and you can’t do on that property. The planning and zoning department will have all those answers for you.

Also, if you want to convert that property into a higher and better use, so for example, the property is used agriculturally now but you want to turn it into a residential lot, planning and zoning will walk you through the steps needed to file those permits to change the zoning regulations.

Once you understand each department’s role, it’s easy to see who you’ll need to contact during your research. Those departments above are the five most important departments you need to get to know in order to succeed in acquiring raw land.

In this episode of the Best Passive Income Model Podcast, Mark chats with Lolita Sheriow, author of Take Action: 21 Steps on How To Take Action and Get Results in Real Estate.

Lolita Sheriow, Lo, is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, motivator, and mentor. Listen in and learn and be inspired by one of THE best real estate investors out there.

So grab your cup of coffee and get ready for some gospel music!

Thank you for listening to The Best Passive Income Model podcast. Your support helps me attract great guests who share knowledge that you can use to grow your business.

If you’d like to help out the Land Geek Community, please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Tip of the week:

Lo: Read The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone and The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.

Mark: Learn more about Lo Sheriow at TakeActionLo.com. She shares with you the seven secrets to wholesaling profits.

When I first got started in land flipping, there was one platform online that assured me quick cash, easy cash, and amazing margins. We’re talking 200-300% return on investments. I’m sure you’ve heard of this platform and I’m sure you’ve used this platform, although some land investors still haven’t utilized this tool for their land investing business.

[Tweet “Hundreds of properties are sold everyday on eBay. Yes, eBay.”]

Now, eBay is great, right? Although it doesn’t come without disadvantages. The biggest pitfall of eBay and why I don’t exclusively sell on eBay is that you’re not going to get the highest price. However, if you want to hold out for the highest price, you can list your properties on the MLS, and go through a realtor. But that could take three, eight, six, even twelve months or longer.

On eBay, I sell properties in a week. Especially when you are just staring out, it is a great way to get that cash flowing, to build your confidence, and start growing your sales and your customer base while building your list. eBay gives you amazing lead generation.

It’s really no secret, I love eBay as a sales platform. There are many others that I use as well online but when you first start out, eBay is a fantastic way to flip a property. If you haven’t yet jumped into selling your properties on eBay, I highly recommend you take the plunge and see if you can’t make some quick cash in the next 30 days.

[Tweet “Take the plunge and see if you can’t make some quick cash in the next 30 days on eBay.”]

Again, the biggest disadvantage is that you’re not going to get the highest price but you are going to get the quickest sale and that’s a win. It is easy, so start building up your rating now on eBay. The quickest way to do that is to just buy coupons, or some other small, cheap item on eBay and make sure those people are giving you positive feedback.

In a nutshell, build up your eBay rating now before you’re ready to list your properties. Then once you do list your properties, expect a quick turn around on your investment!

In this episode of the Best Passive Income Model Podcast, Mark chats with David Barnett, author of Invest Local.

David Barnett has an amazing business model… he’s a broker of commercial debt solutions for small and medium sized enterprises and has arranged financing for over 100 small and medium sized companies. Working with entrepreneurs to build their companies, David’s business model may have Mark’s beat.

Listen in to find out if Mark has finally met his match!

Thank you for listening to The Best Passive Income Model podcast. Your support helps me attract great guests who share knowledge that you can use to grow your business.

If you’d like to help out the Land Geek Community, please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Tip of the week:

David: Go sign-up for the free newsletter at HPnotes.com.

Mark: Learn more about David Barnett and check out his website InvestLocalBook.com and you can find his book here!

I had read Zero to One by billionaire PayPal founder, Peter Thiel last year. It was a great book that is full of truths that apply to every market out there. The biggest take-away for me was that you really need to be a monopoly and dominate your niche. What can you do better than anyone else?

[Tweet “Monopoly is the condition of every successful business. -Peter Thiel”]

But Peter goes one step further and explains that it’s not just dominating your niche, but how can you narrow that down more and dominate your sub-nice to eliminate competition.

[Tweet “All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition. -Peter Thiel”]

In your niche, no matter what it may be, what can you do better than anyone else around?

What uniqueness can you add to the market?

How can you eliminate competition?

EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.

-Peter Thiel, Zero to One

Peter says the best way to succeed is to avoid the competition. So true! We don’t need another McDonald’s or Facebook – what’s the next big thing? If you are working towards the next social media platform, how can you dominate the market by offering something truly unique? We’ve got to stop copying the big shots. We need to learn all we can from them, but we need to stop copying every move – every idea – and truly find our own market.

How does this relate to land investing?

Land investing is easy to get into, but it’s not necessarily easy to dominate. How can you stand out from the crowd and offer something truly different so that potential buyers flock to you?

Ask yourself a few questions…

What will be your sub-niche?

What will your specialty be?

Will you cater to the preppers?

Will you be a wholesaler?

Land investing can be crowded, but it is not saturated. It’s a great time to develop strategies now that will grow your business, giving you an expertise and advantage over others.

How will you dominate your sub-niche?

In this episode of the Best Passive Income Model Podcast, Mark chats with David Schneider from NinjaOutreach.com.

David Schneider is THE marketing expert that will help you take your business to next level.

Having run several extremely successful businesses, David has tapped into marketing for the average Joe, and is the co-founder of Ninja Outreach. Listen in to discover if David’s passive income model has Mark’s beat!

Thank you for listening to The Best Passive Income Model podcast. Your support helps me attract great guests who share knowledge that you can use to grow your business.

If you’d like to help out the Land Geek Community, please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.