The 5 Questions Podcast
Join us as we unlock real estate and business insights, one question at a time.
The 5 Questions Podcast
Land Investing: The Untapped Cash Flow Strategy with Brent Bowers
Brent Bowers reveals how he creates passive income by purchasing discounted vacant land and selling it through seller financing, collecting 10-14% interest with none of the headaches of traditional real estate.
• Buy land at significant discounts and sell it quickly for cash or monthly payments
• Land investing offers superior returns compared to traditional real estate
• First land deal: bought for $285, sold next day for $5,000
• No repairs, no tenants, no maintenance—nothing breaks on land
• Manage 48 land parcels in just 15 minutes per week
• Financial freedom possible with fewer properties compared to rental houses
• Scale your business by hiring for your weaknesses first
• Determine your hourly worth and delegate tasks accordingly
• Start with an acquisition manager on commission to ensure ROI
• Create a "love/loathe" list to identify which tasks to delegate
• Consistency and taking action are key components of success
• Find mentors who have already walked your path
https://www.thelandsharks.com/
Sponsored by: The Wisdom, Lifestyle, Money Show
Welcome to the 5 Questions Podcast, where we unlock real estate and business insights, one question at a time.
Speaker 2:Are you looking to build wealth through real estate investing in North America? I'm Scott Dillingham and on the Wisdom Lifestyle Money Show, I'll be your guide to smart investing across Canada and the US. Each week, I break down the strategies successful investors use. From understanding cross-border financing to hearing from experts, I deliver actionable insights you won't find anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just getting started, I'll help you navigate the unique opportunities in Canada and the US US real estate market. Search for the Wisdom Lifestyle Money Show on your favorite podcasting platform.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the 5 Questions Podcast. I'm your host, mario Lamar. Our guest on today's show is the owner of the Landsharks is a seasoned real estate investor and coach with a focus on buying and selling vacant land. Welcome, brent Bowers. Brent, welcome to the show today.
Speaker 3:What's going on, Mario? Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Looking forward to our discussion, as you do something a little bit different than most real estate investors that I speak to, so really exciting about our conversation today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, I'm excited to talk to you.
Speaker 1:Okay, our concept of the podcast is I ask five questions, either about real estate or business, and we get straight to the point you ready.
Speaker 3:Let's go. Yeah, I'm ready.
Speaker 1:All right. So, like mentioned in the intro, a lot of investors overlook raw land, thinking it can't generate passive income. But you think differently. Can you break that myth and share how land investing can create cash flow?
Speaker 3:land investing can create cash flow. Yeah, I had that same exact thought. I thought you had to be rich to buy land. I always heard you got to buy land and wait. I didn't have time to wait. I needed to make money yesterday, so I heard a guy on a podcast talking about buying land and selling it overnight. So that's what we're doing. That's what I do. I buy land at cheap prices, I buy it for discounts, I buy land for discounts and I turn around and sell it as soon as possible, whether for quick cash or for monthly payment, where I sell or finance and receive passive income from it.
Speaker 1:That is great. So that is a little bit how you consider you create cash flow with your land. You can rent it, but you can also sell or finance with an add-on fee, as we say yeah, absolutely, that is amazing, that is amazing. Okay, that brings us to our second question. And how does investing in land differ from investing in single family homes or multifamily homes, for example?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can use an example of the first house I ever bought in 2007. I bought it for $124,000 in 2007. Then I got a home equity line of of credit for $12,000 so I can replace things like the septic system and repair it. And then my mortgage was about $750 a month. Well, I was getting $950 for rent, so I was getting $200 a month over in the net, and that's the cover, like anything that breaks or whatever. So I'm roughly getting $2,400 a year net. Well, let me tell you, I always had something I had to fix that was worth that cost way more than $2,400 each year, whether it be the water heater or the septic system or the roof leaking, you name it. So I never, ever, cash flowed. I sold that house in 2019 for the same exact price I bought it for in 2007. Let's talk about my first land deal. I bought that for $285. I sold it the next day to a realtor for $5,000. So I netted $4,700 in just a few days. I was hooked. I was absolutely hooked.
Speaker 1:Oh, and anybody with that kind of return would be hooked.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the second one was even better. The second land deal was way better, even better.
Speaker 1:So basically, you don't have to deal with tenants. If we go dive a little bit deeper in the question, you don't have to deal with tenant. You don't have to deal with repairs with the strategy that you're using. Am I correct?
Speaker 3:You got it Dead on. It's like having a rental property that pays me every single month but nothing ever breaks. No tenants, no termites, no trash, no repairs I mean nothing can break on land.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. That brings us to our third question, and maybe many not maybe many believe you need to own hundreds of rental properties to achieve financial freedom. What do you think? Land investing, or why do you think land investing is a better alternative?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. I owned eight doors before I started buying land and let me tell you, I never, ever, could have left my job, which I was in the military, I was in the army. I never could have lived off of that income. Honestly, if I left my job, I would have lost those rentals because there was always something breaking tenant move outs, tenant evictions. Yes, I think that's true. You'd have to have a hundred doors to be able to leave your job, but then you just created yourself another job by evictions. Yes, I think that's true, you'd have to have 100 doors to be able to leave your job, but then you just create yourself another job by having 100 doors.
Speaker 3:I absolutely could not imagine having 100 doors. That sounds like a lot of work to me. I couldn't imagine having 100 tenants to deal with. I was like, oh, we're going commercial, multifamily, multifamily. They're even harder tenants to deal with than the tenants that rent your single family house. So, yeah, I do believe that's true. You would need a hundred hundred doors to pay your bills.
Speaker 3:But if, yeah, I've had actually a hundred parcels of land paying me every single month. We're at 48 right now, but these, these 48, they're, they're more expensive parcels of land and I probably spend about maybe 15 minutes a week on my land business. I do have an assistant because people do sometimes get behind on payments, but there's nothing to ever repair. The phone calls we get is to either they want to pay off their property or they want to change their bank account information because they got a new bank account where they moved or their address changed. So it's very simple to manage 100 plus notes. When I say notes, we sell this land on seller financing. We get monthly payments for it, compared to managing 100 rentals. I still have rental properties, I have rental houses. I have rental buildings, office space, industrial, my houses, some tenants you never hear from some. You hear from every single week. It's. It's absolutely ridiculous yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So and then uh, if we go circle back to, uh, our first question, all the parcels of land that you have at the moment, um, can you maybe circle back and tell us again how you get that monthly cash flow, because I believe there's more than one way you get your monthly cash flow from them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can rent that land out. You can lease it out for hunting or cattle grazing or farming. You could sell it on seller financing my preferred method because that's the least amount of management. Then I'm just basically I'm being the bank and I get monthly interest and then you could sell it for cash. That happens too. People just pay me off right up front. They're builders, they're developers, so they don't need my monthly financing and generally I'm collecting anywhere from 10 to 14% interest per year.
Speaker 1:That's very good. That's almost like in the private lending business up here in Canada.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've paid hard money lenders. More than that, less than that.
Speaker 1:Brings us to our fourth question and I want to know from you you talked about having an assistant, right. How do you scale your investing business and how do you hire a team? How do you choose your team members to help you grow?
Speaker 3:Yeah, when I first got started, my first team member was an acquisition manager, because I needed someone that could bring in a return on investment, someone that could help me make money so I can pay that person. And I paid them 100% commission. I had one person from like 2016 to 2021. And then I hired my first assistant in 2018 when I left the military because I didn't want to leave one job and create another job. So having a good executive assistant is absolutely worth their weight in gold. Now, there's bad ones too. You might have to kiss some frogs before you find your prince. So that's a huge deal. Like yesterday. My assistant just got back from a week-long cruise. I must have sent 10 things on her plate yesterday. Hey, I need this, I need that. And then once I send it to her, it's done. I consider it done, so it's off my shoulder.
Speaker 3:I'm a visionary. I love the book Rocket Fuel. I've got it somewhere here in my office. It's right on my desk, my stand-up desk there. But I am the visionary. I see things, I want to implement it, and then I want someone else to run it after that. Like, I don't pay my own bills my assistant does. I don't. I don't write contracts, my assistant does. I don't write the leases. I don't communicate with the tenants my assistant does. Now I might be the first door they see, but I'm going to pass it off to her because I want her to carry it to the finish line.
Speaker 1:And, like you said, you focus on where your strength is and hire or team up with people that you know they can do the job good. To empty your plate so you can fill it with something else.
Speaker 3:That's right, and the way I look at it is I'm the man that brings the money into the door, Like and I one time I had a big team. I'm at 16 people, I I'm in contract mode. So I tell my team I'm the one that brings in the money, you guys do the rest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's, uh, that's very good insights, and on a scale maybe of one to 10, I would be curious to know or to hear what number you find important, one being the less than the most important to have a team, how important it is to have a team rather than you trying to do it all by yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think in the beginning, whenever you're just starting or maybe you're trying to leave your job, you are the man or the woman that wears all the hats Until you can afford to pay someone. I just had this conversation with a gentleman. He owns a construction company and he's also trying to do his land business and I told him I said you're worth $5,000 an hour. You get on the phone and you close. You make five or $10,000 an hour, but when you first start this business you don't know what you're worth per hour. You're probably worth quite a bit. So once you figure out you're worth per hour, maybe you're paid $25 an hour in your W-2 job and you can hire someone for $10 an hour to take some of that off of your plate to where you're spending 40 hours a week in your job now and you can get that down to 20 hours a week. Yes, you just lost money, but now you can take that 20 hours and put it into your business. That hopefully your side hustle. That's making you more per hour than your job. So you figure out what you're worth per hour. Let's just say it's 500 bucks an hour and you're paying someone with a four-year bachelor's degree to take things off your plate. For $25 an hour, you still have $475 an hour that you can keep. So I'd say on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the most important, but you got to figure out what you're worth per hour. And then, what position do you hire?
Speaker 3:First I say do a love loathe list. Love charges your batteries, batteries, loathe drains your batteries. So something that drains my batteries is paying bills. Talking to uh, talking to tenants drains my batteries. Talking to land buyers. After I've sold them the land, I don't talk to them anymore. That's they are. Now I'm going to speak to my office manager. So what charges my batteries is getting on here and talking to you, Mario, talking to other land investors talking to land sharks.
Speaker 3:That absolutely talking to land sellers. That charges my batteries, bringing money income-producing activities.
Speaker 1:Opening doors, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's the key. Shake hands and kiss babies.
Speaker 1:I should have been a politician, I'm just kidding. Well, brent, this brings us to our last and final question. As I mentioned, this is a quick podcast, but we made it easy for people to listen in their car while they're at the gym and to make sure that they get value and knowledge. And our last question for you is what is the key to your success? Because you didn't start. You know, you started at the beginning, like many people, like many of us, and now you're at a point where I consider successful. So what is your key to success?
Speaker 3:Yeah, just a small million dollar loan from my father. A zero percentage. I'm just kidding, that was Donald Trump. No, I would say consistency and action, taking action. I read books every day. I still do. I'm a mountain climber. I'm always looking for the next mountain to climb, so I'm going to be successful in whatever I put my mind to. It took me longer to become successful in real estate than I wanted. I started in 2007 and I would say I quit for a little while in 2008. But the key to my success is taking action and listening to the right people and being consistent and taking action until it works. Not, oh, let me try this, I'm going all in until it works, not.
Speaker 1:Oh, let me try this, I'm going all in, yeah. And would you say? To just further the question you're a coach yourself. You teach people how to invest in land. Having a mentor or a coach, you cannot do it. You cannot reach certain levels without that, without having a coach.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it's gotta be the right coach. I would say make sure that coach is still doing deals or whatever. Maybe you want to get into fitness, your fitness coach. Um, see, here's like a lot of people want to a really fit fitness coach. I would say I want to coach. If I'm trying to lose weight, I want to coach that was once fat and lost the weight, not someone that's skinny like me. Um, that's always been skinny Like I don't know what that's like. Um, so have someone that understands. It has been there and walked in the shoes you're walking in to do the, the, the, the goals that you're trying to achieve.
Speaker 1:That's good. Yeah, Uh, Brent, I'm sure we're going to have more than one podcast together. We have so much more to talk about. But for today that's all the time we had and I thank you very much for being on the show on the Five Questions podcast, and I hope that our listeners will take a piece of your knowledge, advice and take it on their journey. Talk to you later, God bless. Thanks, Mario. Thanks for tuning into the 5 Questions Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, like and hit the notification bell on our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. Stay tuned for more insights and tips to transform your real estate and business game. See you next time.