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SHOW NOTES FOR EPISODE 667: GENERATING CASH FLOW AND EQUITY WITH INTERNATIONAL LAND FLIPPING
How would you like to generate cash flow and build equity with just a laptop and a phone from anywhere in the world? In today’s podcast, Australian entrepreneur and real estate investor Alicia Jarrett shares how she generates great real estate income from anywhere in the world without having to deal with tenants, toilets and trash!
What You Will Learn
- Why flipping land is better than flipping houses
- How you can build a dynamic support team to free yourself up to enjoy travel and personal interests
- Why good data is critical to your real estate investing success and where you can find it
- The wide variety of types of vacant land you can acquire
- How to generate monthly cash flow from vacant land
- Where are the best places to find off-market, cheap vacant land?
About Our Guest
Alicia Jarrett
Alicia is a passionate and driven global real estate investor based out of Australia, conducting deals in the USA. She co-owns multiple businesses including Global Citizens Holdings Inc., LandScouts, Supercharged Offers and WILDA for Women in Business. Focused on leadership in business and investing in land, her business ventures provide efficient real estate marketing and world-class data solutions, which assists other real estate investors to digitally transform their business for increased results.
More About Alicia
- Alicia was born and raised in South Australia
- Moved to Melbourne, Australia at 17 years of age
- Was looking forward to career, travel, etc.
- Careers included resale, insurance, human resources, industrial relations, a consulting business on leadership training and team development before starting in real estate
- Her first real estate venture was buying her first property to live in at age 26
- It made her think of how she could provide homes for other people
- She started looking at rental properties in Australia
- Unfortunately, the median cost of an average home in Australia is $790,000
- Not to be discouraged, she started looking at other markets and came upon the U.S.
Flipping Homes in the U.S.A.
- Alicia got hooked on flipping shows on HGTV like Joanna Gaines’ show and she thought she could just do that
- She got on a plane and went over to check out various markets
- She spent 6 months of the year in the States
- Getting to know people
- Studying markets
- Putting together a team
- Contractors
- Realtors
- Networking
- Getting involved with Mastermind groups
- She ended up zeroing in on Jacksonville, Florida and started flipping properties there
- She loved it and wanted to do more
- Flipping in the U.S. from Australia is really no different than flipping state-to-state in the U.S.
- The time difference is the biggest challenge
- But once you have a good team in place (your “boots on the ground” and good communication, it’s really not that difficult
- It mainly consisted of:
- Checking out the properties
- Making sure the numbers make sense
- Making sure there’s a plan in place for the property and an exit strategy
- Then, implementing the strategy
- However, the last property they flipped in the U.S. had many problems
- Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong
- They had problems with:
- Contractors
- Theft
- Break-ins
- Market shifts
- But, in retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise because it caused her to re-evaluate her business strategy
From Fix ‘n Flip to Flipping Vacant Land
- They shifted from fixing and flipping homes to flipping vacant land in the Jacksonville market
- Easier asset class
- Less stressful
- Less problems
- Just as much profit — if not more!
- They already had a good team established in Jacksonville so they decided to stay there
- Later, they expanded their land flipping business all across Florida
The Process of Flipping Vacant Land
- Flipping land is different than flipping houses but similar in other ways
- Both processes are heavily “data-driven”
- Because she has a real estate investing marketing company that specializes in helping real estate investors learn to flip land, they have partnered with one of the biggest data wholesalers in the U.S.
- The database is housed in the cloud
- Has every property across the U.S.
- Has every asset class
- Has owner attributes
- Has 65 million business records in it as well
- The database is housed in the cloud
- They look for markets where there is a decent amount of buy and seller activity
- They look at a county and look at how many pieces of vacant land has been transacted over the last 12 months
- What is the ratio of buyer and seller activity
- What types of land are available
- Agricultural
- Infill
- Residential
- Timberland
- They make sure the data is reliable and clean
- Then, they make sure the data targets the right properties and owner attributes
- They look at what people are buying
- Where there’s land that can be…
- Developed
- Built on
- Used for recreational purposes
- They take the data and begin marketing to the people who own the land
- Direct mail
- Pushing ads online
- SMS campaigns
- Cold calls
- Once they reach the person, they ask them…
- “What are you going to do with this vacant land?”
- “If you don’t have plans for it, we can buy it from you.”
- They are also looking at solving problems for land owners, such as…
- Neighbor encroachment on boundaries
- Squatters
- Trash on their land
- Back taxes
- Liens
- Encumbrances on the land that prevent them from selling the land
- Probate issues (especially for intergenerational land)
- Title problems
- They have a team in place just to fix the above problems so they can sell their property
- Real estate attorneys
- Probate attorneys
- Title experts
- Once they take care of the problems, they can flip the land back out on the market by finding a buyer…
- Builder
- Developer
- Neighbor to the property
- Other locals in the area
- Buying strategies include:
- Buy for cash
- Try to find an end user
- Sub-divide the property and sell as smaller lots
- Types of properties include
- Vacant residential
- Agricultural
- Acreage
- Commercial
- Exit strategies include:
- Buy ‘n Hold
- Buy and sub-divide
- Buy and seller finance the property to new owners
- Maybe do a “double close” on the property if it’s not something they want but they known someone else who wants it
- Her Current Deal Volume
- 10 to 20 properties “in process” at any given time
- Closing 5 to 10 deals per month
- With the current recession and inflation, things are slowing down a bit
Biggest Mistake
- She sees mistakes as “opportunities”
- They are always growing and always learning
- Last year, they were doing a big marketing campaign
- They were looking for properties at 1 acre and above in Polk County, Florida
- The owners have owned the properties for at least 5 years and above
- There are no improvements on the property
- Looking for motivated sellers
- They put the data together and launched the campaign
- What they didn’t do was to look at the “minimum value” of the properties
- They should have looked at properties at $10,000 and above
- They sent the campaign to thousands of people but many had properties at $300 and above
- They got lots of calls for properties they couldn’t do anything with
- What they learned was that they had to tighten up their policies and procedures when developing data points for a campaign
- They also developed new relationships with sellers that had other properties that were more in alignment with Alicia’s target
- They were looking for properties at 1 acre and above in Polk County, Florida
Biggest Successes
- They connected with a great Realtor named Mike Cassidy in Jacksonville
- He has been with Alicia and her team since their very first deal
- He now helps them with everything having to do with vacant land and fix ‘n flip houses too
- You really need to look at your entire team and see who can be a true joint venture partner
- It has been mutually beneficial for both parties
- Secondly, they made sure they are always marketing
- In the early days, they would market, get deals and then have to hustle to ramp up and market again to scramble and get deals
- Today, they are ALWAYS marketing, resulting in a constant deal pipeline
- This helped them to create another business – Supercharged Offers – where they can not only find deals for themselves but can also find deals for other investors
- They have customer service people in the Philippines that are supporting this process
- They have customers all over the world using this business
- As long as you have a laptop and a phone, you can do this business anywhere!
Current Business
- What excites her about the future of her business is helping other real estate investors succeed
- As they grow their real estate marketing business, their customers are growing along with that business
- This allows them to add more products and services that are bucking the trend of how real estate investors have always done their business
- Using data-driven systems and technology to help transition real estate investors from hobbyists to true businesses has been very fulfilling
Advice for Old Dawgs Looking at Real Estate Investing to Help Them in Their Retirement Years
- Look at an asset class that is easy for you to do deals
- Vacant land flipping is one of those asset classes
- It’s far less stressful than landlording or other traditional real estate investing
- Vacant land flipping is one of those asset classes
- Look at your “exit strategy”
- For cash flow
- For capital growth
- With vacant land, it’s excellent for cash flow if you finance sales
- You become the bank
- You buy the vacant land and, when you sell it, the new owner pays you back over time
- It’s very easy to set up a seller finance agreement or lease-purchase agreement with vacant land
- You get cash flow on a monthly basis
- Buying land for capital growth
- For example, buy an acre lot and split it into four quarter-acre lots
- Keep one for yourself and sell off the other three
- For example, buy an acre lot and split it into four quarter-acre lots
- She has done deals from a yacht in Croatia to the ski slopes of France
- You can enjoy world travel with this business
- Once you are set up, you can do this business from anywhere in the world
- You can buy vacant land “sight unseen” once you have all the information, websites, know the counties, and the fundamentals, it’s very easy to get into
- In the beginning, she was spending 4 to 5 hours a day doing her business
- But, over time, she got a team in place and now spends no more than 1 to 2 hours a day on her land business
Rap-It-Up
- Favorite real estate book: The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz
- Favorite business book: The eMyth by Michael E. Gerber
- Most valuable web site for success (other than your own): MapWise.com
- Favorite app: TimeBuddy
- Favorite quote: “Done is better than not done.”
- If you lost everything – all your assets – and had to start all over, knowing what you already know, and you only had $1,000, what would you do to re-launch your real estate investing business? I’d take the $1,000 and market. I’d find a good area I want to do deals in and I’d use the $1,000 to find deals. I’d use the $1,000 to make $10,000. Then, I’d take the $10,000, take a little profit out (let’s say, $5,000), then I would take the remaining $5,000 to do more marketing to find more deals. Then, take that $5,000 and turn it into $50,000.
How to Reach Alicia
- Email: Alicia@SuperChargedOffers.com
- Call: 888-538-5478
- Website: SuperChargedOffers.com
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