Seth: Hey, everybody, how's it going? Seth Williams here. I'm back in the saddle with Neil Clements. We're talking about the market update for kind of the middle of the year, 2025. It's been a few months since we did one of these things. These are always a hit with listeners of the podcast and I always enjoy them too. It's good to hear from Neil and his observations on where things are at right now with the market, specifically for land investors, and the things that might be making life easier or harder for us, whether it's political or some other issue. We're here to talk about where things are at right now and get some insights into if things are difficult, why are they difficult? Is there something we can do to make things work better in our businesses? So we're going to dive into all kinds of stuff right here, right now. So, Neil, welcome to the podcast. How's it going?

Neil: Thanks, Seth. Hey, man. Always happy to be here. Always a privilege to be on here with you. And I'm just delighted to talk about the market this year. You said earlier in our intro about good things, bad things, and what's coming. And I'm not sure if many land investors are having a great year this year.

Seth: So, I don't know. Maybe you can tell me more about that. What are you seeing from the community? What are you seeing from the people you're talking to? And how is their business in general?

Neil: I would kind of agree with that. It's almost hard to make a big sweeping statement about what's true for everyone everywhere because it depends on all kinds of different factors. But I would agree. If there was one kind of overarching comment that I've heard most often from people, it's just this idea that, like, things are kind of hard right now; particularly on the selling side, properties are slower to sell. On the acquisition side too, people are expecting a lot more. I've heard some people say really bold statements, like blind offers don't work. And I'm not one that likes to make big statements like that because just saying that, we're assuming a lot of things about what we mean when we say blind offers. Like, how much are we offering? What does our template say? Who are we mailing it to? And on and on. So, but still, I think just the idea that I've heard from a lot of people is that...

You know, land used to be a data-driven business and it still is in a lot of respects, but it's become something much more. It requires a higher level of sophistication and a lot more salesmanship than it used to. Like, you have to actually respond to people. You actually have to build rapport. You have to follow up and schedule appointments and, like, get contracts signed on the phone and that kind of thing. So it just requires everybody to up their game a little bit and have higher RPMs and be able to be more dynamic like that instead of just spray and pray, sending mail and trusting that something will come out of that. You have to just try a lot more things now. That's kind of the consensus I've gotten. I've heard from a lot of people who, on the selling side in particular, just have a really tough time. They're doing what they've done for years, but the buyers aren't there. The properties aren't selling. And I'm sure there are lots of different factors that contribute to this. I'm sure you can chime in on that. But yeah, just in general, things are kind of hard right now. And interestingly, when I see these conversations out there, there's always like a person or two who chimes in and is like, what are you talking about? I'm doing great. Nothing's wrong. So I got to insert that little caveat too. It's not like everybody's suffering, but yeah. What have you been seeing in the market?

Seth: I've seen the exact same thing. I mean, it used to be I would hear a lot of chatter, whether it's in the community or, you know, even from people in my office, my real estate office, the realtor side. I'd hear a lot of chatter, especially.

So in my opinion, a lot of times the market, when it changes, which we'll talk about today, hits the newer investors or newer realtors or whoever it is; it hits them a lot harder because they don't have the skills necessary. They haven't built it up over years. They don't have the disposition funnel, the acquisitions funnel, the sales team, or the staff. And so it's much harder a lot of times for, like, a one-person show because they don't know what they're doing to some extent. And so I've heard chatter for three years from, say, lower-type producers that, oh, this is really hard. This is really difficult.

Neil: Yeah, a lot of times I was chalking that up to, okay, you're just starting in your business. And so it's going to be difficult no matter what. In my mastermind group, though, you know, Seth, you put together through your course and everything. I mean, I'm hearing from the top producers that I'm meeting with, you know, on a monthly basis now, that all of us are having hard times. And these are people all across the nation. You know, it's not just in Texas, where I am, where the market's incredibly slow, but all across the nation. And then Seth, you and I were just talking before this call about your hearing the chatter too. And I think the difference is now it's the top producers who are also slowing down. Now, I'm sure, like you said, that there are always going to be people who are listening to this call and they're like, oh, my market hasn't slowed down at all. I'm still getting multiple offers. I'm selling them as quickly as I can. I would say that is great for you, but you are definitely in a minority, probably not the majority at this point.

Seth: When we say the word slow, what does that mean in your definition? Like how many days or weeks or months would it be sitting on the market before it sells?

Neil: We've been doing this for five years now. We've sold, gosh, a ton of properties. And we tend to focus on bigger properties, you know, say $500,000 plus, big subdivides, things like that in Texas, you know, all the way up to say $3 million. And so we're doing the bigger properties. And so those have always been, in my opinion, slow, right? They've always taken three, six, or maybe seven months to sell in a lot of circumstances.

My definition of slow has now kind of changed over the past, say, six to nine months, where I feel like it's kind of been our slow period. And what I'm talking about when I'm saying slow is even when I'm doing price reductions to get 10% or 20% below market value, I still can't sell it. And to me, that's like the ultimate definition of slow is that you came from, like, a really hot COVID-driven up market, which we'll get into in a second, like what happened there and why we're where we are now.

But now, man, it's just like the gas has left the vehicle. It's like, where did all of these buyers go? And I'll share some stats with you here in a little bit. And I also want to share just with the audience, not only talk about why the market is the way it is, and maybe where we're going. But I've also come up with five different ways to survive and thrive in 2025. And I really like the way that flows off the tongue, right? How to survive and thrive in 2025.

Seth: Yeah, I want to hear all about that. I think that's what we all kind of need right now. To some extent, we need to know what happened and what's going to happen so that we can adjust our businesses. But we also need to know what we do about it. And I feel like we've been especially successful at making a pivot and a transition in this market. So I'm just really excited to share what we've been doing and how it's been working and give some pieces of advice to the audience here.

Well, I'm curious, you know, last time we talked about this, I had this little market update episode. We were talking about things like interest rates and tariffs that we were anticipating were going to cause problems or at least, you know, slow things down, make inflation go up, ultimately making things a little bit harder for everybody really, but land investors included.

Are those things panning out the way that you were thinking they would? Or is that still an issue in any way? Or like, what do you think is making this so much slower?

Neil: Well, yeah, it's for sure interest rates. There's no doubt about that. I mean, as far as tariffs go, I'm not seeing a huge correlation. Now, maybe there's an economist who could come up with some in-depth answer on, you know, yes or no, or why that is.

As far as tariffs, I'm not seeing a huge correlation there. The only way that I'm using tariffs is I know with the combination of future tariffs coming, no matter where they're at, they're probably going to be relatively high. In addition to some of the immigration policies of the current administration.

Right or wrong, whatever your political views, there's no doubt that our construction workers are either having to leave the nation or getting scared or doing something else because it's heavily Hispanic in most areas, especially the South, Florida, Texas, and California. I guess that's the West, but East and West. But those markets are heavily dependent on immigrant workers for construction. And so one area in my business, not only land that I'm looking at maximizing on these tariffs and what's happening with immigration is going and buying new-build houses for rent. Builders are oversupplied, especially in the Southern markets. They're having incredible pricing and incredible deals. And with the tariffs that are coming for the materials to build the house and the construction workers that are not willing to, I guess, accept a little bit of salary because there's a lower supply of them.

Therefore, we know low supply increases prices. So now it's going to be more expensive to build a house on the construction. Prices of houses go up. These big companies aren't going to accept any less for their house. They're going to keep the profit margins. What I'm trying to tell you is, if you go out and find a good deal on a new build, hold it to rent for maybe three to five years, you could potentially be insulated in a really, really good way and ride the wave up. And so I was even personally at a builder's office this morning trying to negotiate a handful of properties to buy for a single-family rental portfolio.

So anyways, that's the tariff side. Rate side, man, this market, the best way I can explain it is like I've got a motorcycle and I just like to piddle around on it and I'll hop on it. You know, I'll try to get it to start. And it's just like the battery clicks. It tries to start. It tries to start. It tries to start. Maybe you get a glimmer of hope. Maybe it turns over once, then it doesn't start or maybe you have to charge the battery or something but it's like these interest rates are just like the lack of gas in the engine of my motorcycle.

To where it's like, man, it just won't start. You get a glimmer of hope maybe for, like, a weekend. And it's like you sell two or three different properties. And then all of a sudden you're dry for like a month or two months. And that's what we've been experiencing. And that's what the land investors that I've been talking to as well, heck, even the land realtors and the house realtors are experiencing the exact same thing. And so if it was just land that was being affected, you know, maybe we could say it was something besides rates. If it was just housing that was being affected, again, maybe we could say something besides rates. But the reality is that the rates are incredibly constrictive to people wanting to go out and buy housing, and then especially wanting to buy land.

And so the rates are what is slowing us down. And there's no decrease in sight in the future.

Seth: A thing to remember, and let me know if you agree or disagree on this, is buying land is essentially a luxury purchase. Because if you're buying land, it's either to build that new house, which is like the luxury path to take, or to use it recreationally, which is also something nobody really needs. It's just nice to have. And when things get tight, luxury is usually the first thing to go.

Neil: Yes. And the interesting thing is, I mean, I just sold the biggest development of my life, a $3 million development, like a week ago that I talked about on the very first phone call that we made a year and a half ago and very fortunate to sell that finally.

And the buyer had no issues paying full market value for that. And so this market is so interesting because it's almost layered. Because we know that the big builders, like Dave Hansen has been saying on your podcast, still got to spend money. They've still got profit margins. So the upper echelon is still going to buy. They're going to buy no matter what. Now, maybe they're going to be more specific about the properties they buy and the prices they pay in different areas with different supply and demand, but they're still going to buy.

But then you go to farmland. Oh my gosh. Some of the biggest trouble I've had this year is selling some rural land just kind of three hours away from a major metro. Oh my gosh, that is slow. And then even our metros that are, say, 30 minutes from Dallas are just incredibly slow too. At prices that I would have thought six months ago when we bought it to do like our entitlements and subdivides, I would have thought they would have flown because they would have last summer. And these are properties whose highest and best use is to what? Build a house?

Seth: We're talking about farmland like it's tillable land or...

Neil: Yeah, it's tillable land, really agricultural. I would say it's more toward the tune of like cattle would be run out of farming and ranching than it is really agriculture in that area but man, just across the board everything that we have has been difficult to sell. The upper echelons like developers and builders, may be a little bit easier but the normal stuff that I think most land investors listening to this call do on a daily basis, like your small rural tracts for residential.

Those have been so hard to sell. And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to tell you why. And so let me get into a little bit of why. And so let's talk about the COVID boom. Let's talk about what happened there. And let's just do a brief summary of, like, where we're at and what we're seeing.

So, as we talked about back in January, when we last did this, there was a huge boom during that 2020-2021 timeframe. Interest rates went almost to zero, as we know from the Fed. It felt like you could just get financing anywhere. It was not hard to buy things. Prices inflated drastically. And also, there were different freedoms based upon different political views going on throughout the nation, where a lot of people came from blue states to red states, right? Whatever your political views are, it doesn't matter. That's just a fact of life.

And so with that migration coming into mainly Florida, Texas, the Carolinas, Georgia, etc., like the Southeast and South, our market just inflated like crazy. Yet it was mostly all migration and free money. You come into 2022 when rates tripled almost overnight, and it seems like the market slowed a little bit. But what we're experiencing now is we're experiencing the hangover of those interest rates that they finally hit pocketbooks with because they got to hit businesses first as the Fed, and then they hit pocketbooks. And then the people are like, “You know what? I probably don't need to buy that 10-acre ranchette in the middle of nowhere, or I don't need to buy that one acre that I've been saving up for to put a mobile home on five years from now. I don't need to go out and invest my hard-earned money. I got to focus on surviving before I can focus on thriving.”

And I think that's what we're mainly experiencing. But it just seems like the market in the South and Southeastern part that was so hot, the fire has been put out. But you know what the funny thing is? We talked earlier about the people who are thriving, you know, their markets are selling versus not. If you... there's a graph on, like, Zillow; there's also a graph on Resi Club. If you want to look at this, it is for housing.

But the markets that were the hottest over the past, the COVID boom, like I said, the South and Southeast have the biggest inventory gains as far as housing, which land pretty much follows housing pretty correlated.

And then you look at the Northeast, such as New York, where people were leaving. You look at California, where people were leaving. You look at Washington, where people left. And all of those markets are now our boom markets. And why is that? It's because now people aren't leaving. There are even economists that have dubbed our current market; they called it the “Great Stay.” And so with that, they're not migrating to these places anymore in the South. So the South is oversupplied and they're staying where they were.

But the crazy thing about these places like California, New York, Washington, and the Northeastern parts is that they're all the areas that are really hard to build in. And so they weren't having the same booms. There are people moving away. People weren't building as much. And so now they have low inventory coupled with high demand and people aren't leaving anymore. They're not moving anymore. So they're the hot markets of the future. It's really interesting to see the shift and to see the booms and the busts based upon geographical areas and what causes them.

Let me hit one stat in Texas. This is really eye-opening. This is in Texas, at the Texas Real Estate Center at A&M. I was looking at their data this morning about small rural tracts and essentially, from the boom of 2020-2021 to now, as far as the volume of small rural tracts we're down almost two-thirds or 60-plus percent, 66%, as far as the volume of properties in the small rural tract database that are selling on a quarterly basis. And so, well yeah and that's the thing:if you follow anything to do with housing, you would know that these markets are already oversupplied for housing. We moved into a buyer's market for sure there.

Land, and they consider that like maybe having 50% more inventory, 30% more inventory, or even 10% more inventory than last year is like a big jump. For land, we're not necessarily, like, growing in inventory, but really what's happening is that the buyers just aren't there.

Like, statistically, the buyers aren't there to come and buy what the sellers are putting out. And so even in my local MLS, I looked yesterday at how many properties expired. And just over the past 90 days for land, it was like 5,000 properties in the North Texas MLS. And so there are people wanting to sell their land.

There's just not buyers, which is exactly what we're kind of talking about on this call. And you were saying you were saying I'm also seeing in the groups that I'm a part of the buyers are gone.

Seth: I realize you probably don't have the answer to this, but I'm just curious. How can we stay nimble as land investors when markets shift like this? Like the hot markets suddenly aren't the hot markets anymore. Like, is there some writing on the wall we can be looking at to be like, oh, this is going to change six to 12 months from now? I should probably start looking at this market instead. Or is it purely reactionary, where all we can do is just look at the historical data and be like, “Oh, OK, well, now it's clear, but it's too late. I already own all this inventory in a place where nothing's selling.”

Neil: Yeah, here's what my gut says. My gut says that you can do all the studying in the world. The hurdle is, even with the recession—so I don't know if you remember 2022, like June—that's when I felt, oh crap, this market is stalled. As a realtor, just with our listings and our properties that we were selling, I was like, what happened? When it was the interest rate gains, of course, right? To go from like two and a half percent for housing to seven and a half within three months. Yeah, that's going to slow you down, right? But at the same time, we actually had a recession in 2022.

And the funny thing is that, you know, that recession doesn't actually get recorded as a recession for, like, two years later. And so the reason I say that is that we could be in a similar instance now. I'm not going to call that. I'm not going to put my name behind it. But at the same time, like, we're definitely headed toward a buyer's market for land and houses. We could be headed toward economic recession, if not already in it at this point for several months.

And every time that the government says there's a recession, by the time you hear it in the mainstream news, it's like a year later. And so that's the hard part: we don't know we're in the thick of it until we're there. And so, like I said, you can maybe listen to these calls that, you know, you and I, Seth, are kind of doing on a biannual or quarterly basis. You can go and research economists, statisticians, you know, different people who talk about it. But the reality is, even the best economists are right, like, 50 percent of the time. They're like the weathermen. Like, you know, that's how reliable even the best economists in the world are and so if you could predict the future, you'd be a billionaire but the reality is that none of us can.

And so I'm excited to kind of get into our next section here, which is like five different ways we can survive and thrive. Like, if we know that we're not going to know what's coming, what do we do about it and how do we stay nimble?

Seth: I have to hear this. Let's jump into it.

Neil: So cool. So the first part of it is getting our heads right. This is mindset.

And when I say getting our heads right, I think that especially for me, I read this in a book. There's a book that Gary Keller and Jay Papasan put out. It's called Shift. And it's essentially like how realtors survive during a market economy shift. Now, I know we're talking to mainly an investor group here, but realtors and investors, it's the same business. We're all in selling real estate. And I recently read a book called Shift Commercial, which I thought was a little bit more applicable to what I do as an investor every day.

And it said that when a market shifts, it's almost like investors and brokers have to go through the five stages of grief. We have to grieve the COVID market that we were in. We have to grieve the market where it was easy to buy and sell land. We have to grieve the data-based land investor who now has to become a salesperson. And the faster you can get through the five stages of grief on the market that you had before... and move into action on new strategies that are going to work in this market, the faster you're going to make money. Like, I felt that. I felt it in a big way.

Seth: It's really interesting. I can totally see that. For anybody not familiar with the five stages of grief, they're denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance. Yeah. It seems very applicable to that and many other things in business and life. So it's interesting you bring that up. And I have personally felt that in my business over the past six months.

Neil: You know, since 2022, I pretty much knew a slowdown was coming. I mean, the writing was on the wall. You can't up the Fed funds rate from like zero to six or whatever it was, you know, in the course of like six months and then not have the hangover. I mean, it's like going out and drinking as much as you can possibly put in your body. And then you expect to have the hangover. Well, we're living through the hangover. The trouble is that we don't have the remedy to go out and cure the hangover. We just got to deal with it and nobody knows how long the hangover is going to last. And so the sooner that we can adjust to this new market, get through the five stages of grief and realize that this is a new future that requires new strategies and new tactics, the better off we'll be.

So that's number one: get your head right and move on. Number two is something that I personally did which is deleverage and get properties moved. And I deleveraged in a big way. I just had one of the biggest sales of my life to a developer here in the past few weeks. And almost all of that money that I received went straight to eliminating debt on my land investments so that I can get them seller-financed and I can get them moved. And in addition to doing creative, which we'll talk about, we've got to price properties aggressively.

This is not the time to list properties on the market at value with a realtor and try to wait 12 months to sell it. This is the time to be aggressive with your price reductions. Reduce it every other week; reduce it every month. This is your time to almost not look at comps. And as a realtor, that hurts me to say; as an investor, that hurts me to say. But in our business and our acquisition side, I just don't feel comfortable relying on comparable sales anymore.

That's what it's gotten to in our market. We can't sell properties for 10% or 20% below comps. Comps aren't relevant. We are having to look at demand-based. We're having to look at... I think Pete Reese said it one time in a video I watched: it doesn't matter what comps say. We're not even, you know, looking at necessarily what market value is; we're looking at, you know, what is the price to sell it in 90 days.

And we have to base all of our acquisition offers on what our 90-day sales price is and then offer 50 to 60% of that. And we got to buy it at substantially lower margins than we do now. The hurdle there is that it's very hard to do.

Seth: I totally get what you're saying in terms of not looking at comps, because especially when things are changing rapidly, like comps really aren't that relevant. Because, like, it was a while ago. It's not relevant today, but even this idea of what our price is to sell at 90 days, like, where does that come from? If comps aren't relevant, like, do you look at comps but just discount them, or...

Neil: You just discount it. Yeah. And maybe that's an overstatement that we don't look at comps. I mean, everybody has to look at comps; comps are the baseline of the business to determine value. I'm just meaning you can't expect to see comps, run your numbers, or do things the traditional way, you know, maybe take 10% off of that and expect to sell it in this market. Like it just doesn't happen. You know, maybe if you do some creative things such as seller finance, you're doing a double close, like you're doing something like that, which is a little bit more creative. Maybe you could, but the days of putting a property on the market and just getting multiple offers and a fighting frenzy over it are way over. That was over three years ago, four years ago. The days of selling properties for market value in any kind of reasonable timeframe are now over as well.

Seth: Do you think this is nationwide or just your market?

Neil: I can't speculate nationwide. And like I said, I know that there are people listening to this who are going to call me a fool. And in their market, they're going to say, no, that's not the case at all. Especially, like I said, the Northeast, maybe parts of California, parts of the West as well, and the Northwest.

A lot of those places are probably experiencing markets that they haven't been in in, say, five years. And so those could be thriving in a way that the Southern markets are not. It's just all of my sphere—the people I'm talking to and the chatter that I'm hearing, in addition to my business, is all based in the South, and it is incredibly slow. And again, incredibly slow means you put it on the market, you do everything right, you price it at or slightly below market value, and how many days does it sit on the market before it sells? Is this like six months or something, or how do you define slow? Yeah, properties that used to sell even a year ago in 30 days priced 10% below market value can sit at 20% below market value for six to 12 months.

Seth: Okay. Like, that's how severe some of these markets that I'm in are going for. And I'm hearing the same thing all the way across the board. As far as the people that I talk with, there are some people who aren't having trouble, especially Chris. You know, I'm in one of my masterminds and he was saying, “Well, Neil, I've been doing this all along.” Like he's in a slower market, Mississippi, Louisiana.

And he was like, man, I always price properties at 30% below market value. I'm selling it to people who are going to develop it from there or other things like that. And so I've always been doing this. So his business is relatively unaffected. It's the people who, like me, are selling to a retail buyer, close to market value on big subdivides, those are the slow ones. And that's what I'm personally experiencing. I'm not used to having to discount a property so much to sell it. That's the whole gist.

Seth: Yeah. And that's another thing just to acknowledge. There are so many different versions of land flipping now. And your version of land flipping is dealing with these larger properties, big subdivisions. Like that's a very different thing than somebody dealing with desert squares or prime infill lots or something like that. And even the market can change. So it's just another thing to be aware of and acknowledge to the listeners out there. But I think there are many people in your shoes now.

Neil: Yeah, and I think there are multiple different markets. And so the interesting thing is that you have a national market, you have a state or regional market, and then you also have a hyper-local market. And so I can look at two different counties and have two completely different results. I can look at two different states; I can look at nationwide. And so it is incredibly hard to do a market update, right, based upon the whole nation, which is why we kind of break it down into these segments. And thanks for hitting on these different segments.

But I will tell you this, and this is really my next tip, which is that the A properties are like the best properties at the best prices. That's what's going to sell right now. And so if you're having trouble in your business selling things, well, you need to go back and you need to reevaluate the types of properties that you're buying. You need to evaluate, like, are these excellent properties with high demand? And then you also need to go back and reevaluate your pricing on those properties. Because even in a slow time, you know, just over the past, say, year or so, I mean, we've had several sales at a million-plus where it's a cash buyer and they don't care what the market's doing. They're not buying for now. They're buying to hold it for 10 years and they don't care. Now, those are AA-plus properties with development potential. Maybe they're entitled. Maybe they're in the path of growth, commercial-type properties. Those properties still have a ton of demand. And that's kind of what we're gearing our business a little bit more toward right now: trying to find where the demand is.

But for everybody else who is slow, you need to evaluate your business, figure out where the A-plus properties that people, no matter what the market is, are always going to buy, go after those and try to find the buyers. Because the buyers are still there for those.

Seth: I was going to ask you, but you kind of just clarified it as you were talking there. But when you say like grade-A excellent properties, you're saying that based on just the uses or like the demand or the price or the market, or like, how do you quantify, okay, this is officially a great property?

Neil: The ones that I haven't had much difficulty selling are like the ones where I put the sign in the yard and people still beat down my door to buy it. One instance of that was in the path of growth for commercial. It was essentially like, I don't know, half a mile away from an emerging city center that was in the path of growth where commercial business was probably going to come in there five or 10 years from now. And so we had a speculator come who wanted to buy it to hold it for potentially 10 years until that growth happened.

Another one that I sold was out in kind of a secondary market to DFW out east that still has a good population. But again, it was, you know, five minutes from a major high school and five minutes from a middle school but had no deed restrictions, was not in city limits, and had full utility access, city sewer, and city water. And so a mobile home park developer came through and bought that. It's going to entitle it to, like, 500 lots.

And so when I say grade-A properties, the ones that I'm specifically referring to that I'm currently doing are kind of basically commercial-style properties. And so, and those are the ones that still have some liquidity from what I'm seeing.

Seth: And that path of growth comment is an important one to understand in terms of, like, how do we know if it's in the path of growth? Is it just because, oh, look, a Starbucks just went in there? This must be a path of growth. Or is it like we see these three developers building new subdivisions around here, and this is within, like, a five- to 10-mile radius of that? Now we know it's in the path of growth.

Because I know you were talking about these ones that were more rural, like the agricultural ones or, you know, three hours away from, you know, Dallas. Like those were the ones you were having a harder time with, right? So those are not necessarily in the path of growth.

Neil: 100%. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I would not define the bigger properties that I'm referring to as in the path of growth. You know, I might have said rural. They're not really rural. I mean, they're on the fringes of a major city within, say, 10 minutes to a population center of $300,000, $400,000 plus. The one in DFW that I sold was 30 minutes to downtown Dallas, which, to the south, you can actually get pretty good mileage on. The other one was pretty close, like 10 minutes to the biggest high school in the area in East Texas. So it's more commercial-style developments.

And so those are still happening. Those are just, in my experience, very hard to price. That's not my specialty necessarily on the realtor side. And so for me, I'm just really, I guess, good at identifying value and then finding the commercial team to put that together and get it sold.

Seth: Would you buy those properties again, the rural ones or the ones that are further away? Would you do that again, but just make a lower offer? Like, do you think people should just not pursue this anymore or like do it, but just make a smaller buy box in terms of what you're willing to pay for it?

Neil: It's a really good question. I do think that at some point there is a price that I'd be willing to pay for anything, you know. So unless it had negative value, which there are properties that have negative value, believe it or not. And so some of these properties I've held on to just for way too long. My pricing strategy in markets too far away from DFW that I was expanding into was not the best. I just overpriced them.

And so now I'm dealing with the repercussions of overpricing them when the market was hotter. And then now, as the market is slower, I'm having to catch up to the market. And I liken it to a falling knife. And so, like, it's so difficult because every side of me as a realtor, if I'm sitting down with a client, I'm advising them a certain thing, right? To go out and price aggressively, we need to get it sold quickly.

And then in my own personal portfolio, like, I got to ask myself, like, am I doing the same thing? Like, am I being stupid? And so if you drop a knife, it's going to fall straight down. And so your objective as a land investor or a realtor, whoever it is, is to price ahead of the falling knife. You don't want to catch the falling knife because then you get cut. And so that's the best way to price in a falling market, which we are definitely in in some of these areas: you've got to price ahead of the market, you've got to price aggressively and you've got to get it out to as many people as possible.

Seth: And I can already sort of think through this from a listener out there or several listeners, probably saying, “Yeah, but they're not going to accept my offers then. So I can't get deals.” Do you think people should be pursuing, like, double closings more so they can price it higher and not have to take title to it? Or just deal with it? That you have to send a lot more mail and do a lot more texts or calls to get a deal. Like, how do you reconcile that?

Neil: It's almost like you have the script on what we're going through today. You don't, but that is the next thing—explore methods of disposition. And I think even before the call, you were saying, like, gosh, we've got to do seller financing. Like, why haven't you tried that? And for me personally, we have, but just for other people, it's like, you've got to be able to dispose of these properties creatively, whether that's seller financing or maybe a lease option.

Or even before you, when you contract, like you said, maybe do a double closing to try to, you know, instead of—the whole concept behind a double closing is that if you can't lock up a property at, say, 50 to 60% of market value, buy it, flip it, and pay all the closing costs. Well, maybe you could lock it up at, I don't know, 80% or 90% of market value and then flip it to somebody else on a double closing because you had no risk; you're willing to take less return. And so, yes, I do think that this is a market where that's especially helpful. The trouble is, I feel like a lot of people are doing that. And in doing that, they are hurting the people who used to pay 50 to 60% of market value. Because now it's like all these people are offering almost full market value just on the chance. And so sellers' expectations have risen drastically.

Seth: Yeah, totally.

Neil: So that's the hard part with the markets that we're in. I'm reminded there's a really good book out there. It's called The Recession-Proof Real Estate Investing. It's by Jay Scott, previous BiggerPockets guy. And I'll read you the quote. It says, "Success in real estate investing comes from investors' ability to shift business strategies quickly and successful investors are flexible."

And so… This is not a market where you can say, well, I've always done it this way. So I'm going to continue to do it this way. I think there's also a book out there called Who Moved My Cheese. And it's essentially like if you're Blockbuster and Netflix is coming, like this is the kind of stuff we're dealing with.

Like you're Blockbuster and Netflix is coming. You've got to pivot your business model. You've got to try something new. Are you going to be, what is it, Nokia or Motorola? Or are you going to be Blockbuster? Are you going to be put out of business by a changing market condition or a competing business? Is that going to put you out of business because you refuse to adapt and you refuse to change to the current market? Are you going to try to just keep on running uphill and just keep on tripping over yourself?

Seth: I guess just speaking for myself, I don't know about everybody else, but it's not that I'm not willing to change. It's that I don't really know what to do. Like, I just need somebody to tell me, like, do this, Seth. Follow these steps and it'll work out for you. I can totally execute. I just don't know. You know, talking about like Blockbuster and all this stuff, those are great examples of like huge companies. I'm sure there were plenty of smart people there, and yet they somehow still dropped the ball and didn't make it work. And I wonder if it was a similar thing for them where it's like they just didn't know. By the time you figure it out, it's way too late. And I think there's also a little bit of a disadvantage to anybody out there who has a lot of experience in something because there are a lot of standards set in your mind for how things are supposed to work. It takes a lot of time to learn this stuff. And once it gets etched into your mind, it's really hard to like erase that and rethink how it's all supposed to happen.

Neil: It's extremely hard. And I've personally gone through it and that's why just over the past year. And that's why I absolutely think it's a grieving process. I mean, honestly, I think in the past year I've had to grieve my previous business. Like, and I'm dead serious about that. I'm not embellishing.

Seth: I never thought of it as grieving, but like, that's an appropriate word and that's what's going on.

Neil: It is. And you know, and I don't want to overstate it to say that it's not as important as the death of a loved one or grieving anybody who's going through real grief. Like, please don't hear me wrong. At the same point, like, I really do think I've gone through those five stages and it's just really interesting. The last tip that I have for us on five ways to thrive and survive is to evaluate your business model, which we already kind of went through, and evaluate what's working and what's not working.

And you've got to get back to more of what is going to work. And if what you have done historically is not going to work, then you got to try something new. I mean, it's one of those things. And if you can't figure out how to try something new and what you're doing is not working, then you've got to go out and get a J-O-B. You've got to go get a job.

And that's kind of the worst-case scenario, I think, for most investors, having to do that. But you've got to cut unnecessary expenses. Like if your marketing is no longer working, right, I'm not saying cut your marketing but you've got to do it a different way; you've got to do it a better way. Like you said, if direct mail blind offers aren't working, maybe you go back to neutral, and you've got to be a better salesperson. Maybe you go to cold calling or hire a third-party firm. Maybe you go to texting. Maybe you go to realtor relationships, broker relationships. I mean, there are a hundred different ways to do this business. Maybe you become social media guys, right?

I mean a hundred different ways to do the business. You just got to decide what is going to work, what you are willing to commit to, and whether you are in it for the long term. Because the reality is we just went through one of the biggest up markets in U.S. history of housing and land, which has been from 2008 to 2025, essentially.

And during that time, rates were near zero. And the hard reality is that eventually we will have to pay for that. I don't know if it's recession or depression or the hangover or what it is. Eventually, we will have to pay for it or maybe we already have through inflation. But like, if you couldn't make a real estate business work in the COVID era, or you couldn't make a real estate business work in the 2010s, like 2013 to 2020, man, like, it's gonna be really hard for you now. I'll say that. But my tip here was going to be cut unnecessary expenses and pivot staff toward profitable activities. You know, if you've got dead weight on your team, you know, you're unfortunately going to have to get rid of them and move on. Or you're going to have to redistribute your efforts to profitable activities. And I had to let go of a VA just because she wasn't cutting it. I brought on a full-time dispositions person, which I've never had before because I've just always listed my properties as a realtor, being that I am one.

And I'll tell you though, even he's slow. We're doing all the activities, but it's even slow at the prices that we're at. And so I guess some of the best in the industry, which is who Seth is connected with, which I would probably consider myself to be one of the top performers and all the people that I'm connected with. If most people across the board are saying how hard this time is, it must be pretty freaking hard. But something you said earlier, I thought, was really interesting. I'll let you get to this, which is I was talking about how hard it's going to be for a new investor to come into this business. You were hitting on how hard it is for an old investor to pivot their business.

And the new investor can shift like that. The old investor has staff and baggage and other stuff to deal with. So honestly, it's just as hard for anybody. It's a matter of your experience. I mean, when I compare the two, in some ways, I almost see it as easier for new people if they're well-capitalized, if they're willing to be nimble, if they're always keeping their ear to the ground to figure out, okay, what's working for you? What's working for you? What's working for you? Versus somebody who has just done it a certain way for so long. You know, it's the five stages of grief thing. Like, it's just really hard to work through that and accept that things are different now.

Seth: Have you ever seen the show Alone, Neil?

Neil: Hmm.

Seth: So I was on a group call just yesterday talking about this. I'll mention it again. Alone, the purpose of the show is that there are 10 contestants and they have to go and live by themselves in the wilderness, like way up in the Northern Canada region, where it's like a super hostile environment. It's just really difficult. And the last person to survive without tapping out and leaving wins half a million dollars.

So the show just follows each individual to see, how are you doing this? How do you not starve to death? Almost every contestant goes on the show with a certain plan of how they're going to survive. Like one of them might say, okay, I'm going to find and hunt and kill big game. I'm going to find a bear and that's how I'm going to survive. But then they get there and they're like, oh, wait, there are no bears around here. So I can't do that anymore. My whole plan is now sabotaged. I've got to totally rethink this. How am I going to get food? And the ones that last can rethink it. And they're like, okay, well, I guess I'm going to go fishing now.

And so they might build a gill net. It's basically just this big homemade net that they put out there. And they put it on a stick and they just leave it in the water. And they hope that a fish is going to run through it and get stuck. And there they go. Now they have fish. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

And when it doesn't work, some of them, like, get really down. Like they lose all their hope. Like, oh my word, that was going to be my plan B and it's not working. But all they got to do is, okay, well, I guess I'm going to take a fishing rod and go fishing more actively now. I have to be willing to do that. And then they end up catching tons of fish. So it's just about, like, trying these different things and being willing to go there.

And is it uncomfortable? Heck yeah. I mean, there's tons of stuff that I don't even want to think about doing in my business. But the bottom line is, like, if I'm not willing to go there, my fate is kind of sealed. Like, I'm saying I'm quitting because I'm not willing to try things that are going to replace the thing that's not working.

So I think it's just an important thing to think about. It's a good analogy that came to mind: it's like the people that survive are willing to be versatile and try different things. And, you know, if something doesn't work, as discouraging as that may be, just realize there's always something else you can do. And whenever I talk to land investors that are struggling, like, it's usually not that hard to figure out the things they haven't tried yet. What's really going on is like, they don't want to try them. And it doesn't mean they won't, but I think we all, if we're honest, have to admit there are certain things we just don't want to mess with. Like, I don't want to send texts or do cold calling and all this stuff, but it's like, if that's the key that will unlock things. And like, you've got to be willing to try that.

Neil: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. I cannot think of a more perfect analogy. And I'm sure that really hit home for everybody listening. It hit home for me. So yeah. And I think that's the question of this market: what are you willing to do or what aren't you willing to do? You know, because if you are not willing to do things that you were previously not doing, then it's probably just not going to work.

And so this market, even like I just said, this quote from Jay Scott, “Success in real estate investing is going to come from an investor's ability to shift business strategies quickly.” Successful investors are flexible. And so even in that show, it's like bears aren't there. Cool. We're not going bear hunting. We're going to go fishing. And maybe if you killed the bear, like I think about this in my own business, if I killed the bear, maybe it's a million-dollar property. I would make a good amount of money, like a year's worth of money. If I only fish, maybe I can only eat for a day. But it's like, if the bears are gone, I can't continue bear hunting. And the strategies that I went after the bears with, I can't continue to do that. I got to learn how to fish. And so I think that's incredibly relevant.

But I'll tell you this, if you can figure out how to do this land business in a down market, like we are in and are going to be, you're going to come out with an incredibly strong business right afterwards. I mean, some of the biggest businesses that we have now were built during recessionary times, during down market times. And this period that we're going into, it's going to be harder to fundraise money. It's going to be harder to find funders. It's going to be harder to generate leads because the prices are going down, but the people still expect the same price from you. You hit on that on acquisitions.

Dispositions, it's going to be harder to sell a property. You're going to have to take more discounts. You're going to have to do creative double closes and wholesaling, and you're going to have to shift business strategies to survive.

And I'm speaking to myself right now as much as I'm speaking to y'all. So just know that. It's one of those things that if you don't adapt, you're not going to be in it.

Seth: On this whole note of me wanting you to have a crystal ball and tell me the future, when will things turn around or like, what would have to happen for things to get better and suddenly get easier? Like, is that ever going to happen or is this just kind of the new reality we all have to live with?

Neil: Yeah, I would say it's going to come back. I mean, we know that biblically there's nothing new under the sun, you know. And so we go through seasons and there are ups and downs. And even, like I said, biblically, like a document that has been around for what, 5,000 or 6,000 years in some parts, especially like Ecclesiastes, tells us that there's nothing new under the sun and life goes through seasons. There are seasons of ups and there are seasons of downs.

The real estate market is no different. And so the only good news that I'll tell you is that as far as the up market, the up markets tend to last longer. And we just went through, like, the biggest bull run possibly in history. And so the bear might be a little longer than normal, but typically the recessions are a lot shorter if we go through one, right? The down markets.

And even if we don't go through a full-on recession, like publicly declared or GDP negative for simultaneous quarters, like the actual definition of recession, there is no doubt that the economy is slower now than it was a year ago or two years ago. We are down. We just might not be in a full recession yet. What's going to lift us out, and the only thing I think that could is the Fed funds rate lowering. But the difficulty is that the Fed is telling us that they're probably not going to lower rates. We'll kind of get more info this week when the meetings happen, but they're not projecting anything until at least September. And who knows how quickly that will go down?

And so for me personally, in my business, I'm preparing for a slow season for the rest of this year, all of next year, and potentially the first part of 2027. Do I really think it'll be that long? No, I don't think it'll be that long, but I think it's very possible.

Seth: I don't know if you've had any realizations as things have kind of slowed down and perhaps they will continue to be slow, but whether it's for yourself or just recommendations for other people, just financially speaking, I've known a lot of people who have only experienced good times in the land business and it's hard to plan for a storm when all you've ever experienced are good times.

But in the interest of diversification or just sound financial principles, like, say, you know, this $3 million property you sold and you paid off a bunch of debt with it, that kind of thing. Like, what should a person do? Is it smart to keep X amount of a cash balance in your bank account just because? I've heard that that's really dumb because cash just, you know, goes down in value and all this stuff. But maybe this is just a deeper tangent than we can go into right now. But I don't know, like, as the world goes on, if somebody does make some good money, like, what should you do with it to weather these kinds of storms if and when they come?

Neil: So it all depends on how deep the storm is or how hard the storm is going to hit. And that's the trouble is you never know how hard it's going to hit. And so, in my opinion, there are just different levels of risk tolerance.

A fantastic book that I read on this recently is The Psychology of Money. And in that book, he's incredibly conservative. I think he said he kept like 25 percent of his net worth in cash or something like 10 percent. It was a very high number that I was like, oh, my gosh. It has a lot of other good foundational knowledge, but it was like his risk tolerance was pretty darn low. As far as what we should be doing right now with the money, it is my opinion that in order to weather a deep storm, you have to have cash on hand and you have to have a lot of it and you need to watch your leverage.

And so that's something that if you're getting bank loans or if you're doing partnerships like funding partnerships, like you're okay if somebody else's capital is being risked. But especially if you're personally guaranteeing loans, you're going to a bank or you're getting financing elsewhere, you need to really, really watch that leverage because the reality is that with land, there is no plan B.

You know, I have yet to see a really good cash flow strategy for land where the purchase price versus return can even cover the monthly mortgage on something like that. And so when there is no plan B and the market shifts, if you didn't buy it right, you have the potential to be upside down and you have to deleverage. And so what I personally did with my portfolio after that sale is I paid off some land and paid off some different properties that I owned as well that weren't land, like some single families and things like that.

And I'm keeping probably too much cash on hand because I definitely, over the past five years, subscribed to the mentality that cash is trash. As far as, like, getting it working, having velocity of money, what everybody was pushing, you know, getting it out there and getting it deployed.

And I'm still going to deploy it. I'm not one of those who is like, I'm going to sit on the sideline. I'm going to wait for the steal. I'm going to wait till everything crashes and I'm going to come pick it all up. I think the better philosophy is to buy at the time of what you're looking at, like buy a deal 20 or 30% below market if you're single family, 50% below if you're land and keep your cash working in that regard. However, I am sitting on a very big capital stack and intend to keep that capital stack this year and potentially next year to weather the storm.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm not going to spend money. That doesn't mean I'm not going to buy properties. I am in the business of land flipping. That is my primary income, far above anything else that I do. And so I still got to buy land. It's just I got to buy it at substantially better margins. And I got to be really smart with my debt. I got to be really smart with my leverage. And I've got to go renegotiate those debts if I'm coming off on maturities. And so that's the biggest thing I would say as far as cash positions—hoard cash, buy great opportunities, but I wouldn't be desperate to go and purchase land to take a huge risk right now, if that makes sense.

Seth: Awesome. Well, any final thoughts you want to wrap up with, Neil? It's been awesome, by the way. Appreciate you sharing all this.

Neil: Yeah, happy to do it. I mean... the only thing that I would say, a few things to add, I mean, what does all this mean for land investors? I think I kind of hit on it already, but you've got to be prepared for this disposition issue and this acquisitions issue for, I would say, at least a year and a half. And so if you're not willing to do that, then you've got to maybe figure out something else.

I think that a lot of people were teaching a lot of things about land and how great it is. And I think that we're going to start to see some people getting foreclosed on, especially some investors. I think we're going to start to see some funders dry up with capital like we already have in a big way. I think we're going to continue to see land investors not willing to pivot their strategies will not be here over the course of the next year to year and a half. And I think we're also going to continue to see our marketing not hit the way that it used to either. And so I don't want to be doom and gloom. I just think before people continue to work in this business, you need to know it's going to be really hard.

And it can be done. I'm going to continue to do it. I know Seth will continue to do it. I know that there are going to be thousands of people continuing to do this business. You just got to pivot a majority of things in your business. And so there is an advantage to starting off brand new. So if you're listening to this, you've never done a deal before. You're just going to have to get some marketing out there. You're going to have to figure out what works. Just know that maybe some of these numbers that people were telling you as far as how many mailers to deals or how many cold calls to deals, the numbers you're going to have to offer, just might not be the same anymore. So your margins will probably be lower.

Seth: Have you ever felt, I don't know if shame is too big of a word to use, but almost like you were ashamed of a deal that you did that went bad? Like you almost look back like, what a fool I was. What was I thinking? How could I do that? Just kicking yourself in hindsight or do you not think of it that way?

Neil: Man, I'll tell you this. The times that I have lost money, which is like less than 1% of the time. I mean, I think like a handful of deals total. I know exactly why I lost the money and the learning that I got from it caused me to never do it again. And so, I mean, I've lost up to $50,000 on a flip before. That was a house—land I've actually never lost before, which is great. But ashamed? No.

Stupid? Yes. But the only way to lose is if you quit. And so I'm not embarrassed by my shortcomings. I'm just very aware of them. I've tried to hire people around me to mitigate them. And I've tried to learn from my mistakes as much as possible.

There's a great quote that maybe we can kind of leave this podcast on, which is, "You don't succeed your way to success; you fail your way to success." And I've probably had more failures than many, but I also think that's why I'm probably more successful as well.

Seth: The reason I ask about that is because I can think of a package of parcels I bought a number of years ago; I spent over 50 grand on them. I don't know if I could call them a failure yet, but it was supposed to be like an ongoing passive income investment. And, like to date, it has not yielded anything. Again, I don't know if ashamed is the right word, but like I definitely feel dumb. And like, I think back, if only I could redo that, I would never go near that thing.

But I also got to remind myself, like, at the time, with what I knew in that moment, like, if I were there today, I'd probably do it again. Because, like, all the information I had pointed in the right direction.

And there's a book called Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. She was a champion poker player. And she talks about this idea that you can make a decision and it can go the wrong way and go bad. But like that was still the right decision to make because with all the information and data you had in that moment, it still would have pointed you in the right direction. It's this idea that the people who make mistakes are the people who are doing something. And that's something to be proud of. Even if things don't always work out, it's like, hey, I tried. I took shots at things. I wasn't just resting on my laurels and doing nothing with my life. I tried to do something great. And if you don't have failures at some point, there's an argument to be made that maybe you should be taking more risks. It's just a perspective to keep in mind.

Neil: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think it's a fantastic observation. Love that. I think that right now is just the time to evaluate your business. Deleverage, buy lower so you can sell lower, explore creative options, and just be prepared for this market that is inevitably different than probably 99% of us listening to this have ever experienced.

And so, yeah, I think that's the future for us. I don't want to be doom and gloom. And I don't want you to think, if you're listening to this, that it's like, it can't be done. Absolutely, it can. You just really have to be willing to go out and do things that nobody else is willing to do to be successful in this market.

Seth: I might even add, as you're out there exploring new things you've never done before, you might be pleasantly surprised that some of them are fun. Maybe you even enjoy them just because you haven't tried them before. It doesn't mean, like, it's actually a step in the right direction. And something you should have been doing all along. A common thing also in recessions is that people let go of employees that they should have gotten rid of a long time ago because they were dragging everybody down. Like you're kind of forced to do things that were a long time in the making. You just finally were forced to do it. So I wouldn't be afraid to try new things, even though it's unfamiliar territory. You could be surprised. It's a good move in the long run.

Neil: Absolutely. And like I said, if you can survive now, you can survive any time.

And so, you know, if you can thrive through this time of down markets, especially in the South, you can thrive through any time. And so, you know, I wonder, maybe somebody can chime in in comments or wherever this is posted, you know, let us know, you know, is there anybody who was in maybe a down market in like '21, '22, or '23, who felt this several years ago?

And maybe I'm just kind of feeling this because I'm in Texas in the South. You know, is there anybody who already rode this wave who could, you know, maybe give us a few comments on what worked and what didn't work? Because I'm sure that there are. And I'm sure, just like I'm sure that there are people on this call who are going to say, this is not me, this is not my business, you know, and that essentially in their business, things are going incredibly well. They can sell properties in a heartbeat as long as they can find them.

And so I know that they're out there. And so I don't know. Is the solution switching markets? Is the solution buying different types of properties? Is the solution doing other things like that? For me personally, I'm not going to be switching markets. And so I'm going to find what works here. I'm going to stay in what I know because I feel like that's where my success has been. And so I'm going to find a way to make it work and feel like I'm running uphill on it, but I'm going to find a way to make it work.

Seth: Well, I'll be curious to see how it goes in the months ahead.

Neil, thanks again for being on the call. Thanks to everybody for listening. I'm not sure where the show notes are going to be at yet, but I'm going to include links to some of the books that Neil was talking about and other things. Wherever you're listening to this—YouTube, Apple, or Spotify—I'll have a link in the description if you want to click through that and check that out. So we will talk to you next time.