Is A Funding Partner For You?

You’ve probably already heard about funding, and now you are wondering if you should look into it further. Maybe your knowledge about funding is limited, and you’re looking to learn more about the potential benefits – or risks – to your business. Wherever you are on your real estate business journey, we’ve got the basics covered here to help you determine whether funding is the right next step for your land investing business.

Bottom Line Up Front:

The land investment business is one in which your biggest expense relies on one thing – property acquisition. For this reason, you should take seriously where this capital comes from. Determine what your risk threshold is and ensure you stay within it. Carefully weigh the pros and cons of using funding and surround yourself with partners you think you’d want to work with long-term. A partnership engagement is a relationship, not just a transactional opportunity!

In businesses looking to expand, funding opens the door to scale. Instead of basing your goals on your own limited capital, establishing funding partnerships forms a business model that you can apply in a repeatable way.  We’ve used funding for our own investments and it was a game changer; we’d encourage everyone on this space to look hard at the opportunities funding provides, but go into it eyes wide open.

What is Funding?

In the simplest terms, Funding in the land investing space is leveraging other people’s money, connections, and experience. It’s bringing on a partner so you have more capital to invest in other parts of your business and not tied up in inventory. 

In addition to just the capital, a partner can provide motivation and encouragement. You’ll gain another viewpoint to confirm you are on the right path with your purchase and development plans. If done right, it will expand your vision, help gain access to larger deals and facilitate scaling your business.

There are a lot of different forms and structures that funding can take, but funding is not a loan: neither a hard money loan nor a short-term loan. Simply put, it’s an equity investment and a true partnership.

Limitations of Using Your Own Money

Using your own money to fund your land business involves many limitations, some of which are detailed below.

1. Entry Barrier

For many trying to break into the land business, one of their greatest challenges is a lack of funds. To get started, they feel they need to only target low-value deals because they don’t have the funds to take on bigger, more expensive, trophy properties. This can be time-consuming, delay growth, and demotivating.  It’s a shame when we see folks get used to doing small deals and then only target properties they can afford based on their account balance. We recommend, if the goal is to scale (not always the case), leverage others’ time, experience, and resources!

2. Tying Up Your Capital in Inventory

If most or all of your capital is tied up in inventory, this will impede growth and may ultimately be detrimental to your business. Many land investors find they reach a point when they hit a limit – everything stalls and comes to a halt and then it becomes hard to get your momentum back.  We’re seeing more and more, where land investors bring in the leverage of a funding partner before you actually need to. You also don’t want to put yourself in a position of needing to sell property just to free up capital to take advantage of a great opportunity; with the right partners in place ahead of time, this can be mitigated.

3. Spending Yourself Out of Money

If you are trying to scale your business, then you need a profitable and scalable business model. This involves repeated turnover of cash for investment, and you want to be ready to invest when opportunities arise. Try not to spend yourself out of money, especially as you start aiming for larger properties to purchase.

Is Funding for Me?

Setting your goal based on what you have is limiting. Your lack of resources, whether financial, experience, or skills, might make you shoot low. 

When setting your goals based on what you want to achieve, determine what your pain point is and how you can solve it. What exactly is holding you back from growth? What do you find fulfillment in? What do you struggle with?

The leverage of funding is probably right for you if:

  • You are an experienced investor, and you’re getting into larger deals.
  • You have an interest in cash sales, whether exclusively or in addition to seller financing.
  • You find yourself being held back by capital flow issues.
  • You are working hard for land investment to be a big source of income, so you can achieve other goals in your family, church, or any other organizations you belong to.

Funding may not be the best option in every situation. Some of the times when funding your business is not advised are:

  • When the deal is too small to offer a worthwhile return to both parties.
  • When the margin on the deal is not enough to split. In cases like this, you can go ahead by yourself if you have the money to fund it.
  • If it’s not your goal for your business to grow too much. You might just be into the land business for some extra cash and that’s great!

Conclusion

Here at Freedom Land Capital, we have several clients who change their business model to include funding in every deal. Their target is newer markets and bigger deals, and their confidence in our ability to support the acquisition of any quality deal that comes up gives them the courage to go for it. We hope you do too!

Giving Up to Get Ahead

We believe that, like us, most people set goals, and in the process of doing so consider all the steps they’ll have to take to achieve them. They ask themselves questions like, “What are the actionable steps to take?” and “How long will it take to achieve these goals?” By answering these questions, they can start to make plans, asking “If we want to achieve that goal in 3 years, what has to happen in the first year?” To better define the steps, they may break them down further, determining what has to happen in each quarter, or even what they should be doing each week.

For what it’s worth, these are all sound ideas; after all, if you want to achieve your goals, you must take action and be prepared for hard, diligent work. But what if we told you that putting in the work is just one piece of the puzzle – and that it’s the easy part? Wrapping your head around the amount of time and effort you will need to invest to make an endeavor successful is definitely a step in the right direction – but it’s not the whole picture. 

We have found that there’s another piece of the puzzle that often gets missed: the other side of the equation that’s equally important, if not more so. In this article, we will be looking at a shift in mindset that allows you to leverage an inevitable part of each venture, turning a common obstacle into your biggest motivation.

The Other Side of the Equation: Giving Up

This missing part of the puzzle that is so rarely discussed is the ‘risk’ of pursuing your goal. In addition to what you’re willing to do to get to where you want to go and achieve your goals, you must also consider what you are willing to give up. 

These decisions might range from leaps that are as big as a lifestyle change for you and your family to something as trivial as giving up the time you spend watching your favorite TV show, and everything in between. Most times, if you believe your risk to be greater than your possible reward, chances are you won’t take the leap.

What are you willing to give up?

After you have gone through the first step committing to a goal, it is time to get into the second step: deciding what you’re willing to risk. Will it be worth it if you lose those things in the process of obtaining your goal?  These risks take different forms for different people depending on the circumstances and what you need to give to achieve your goal:

1. Stability

As humans, we have a natural tendency towards stability rather than leaping into the unknown. This comes in different forms, including job security and financial stability. People may not be willing to take risks at the expense of their stability such as:

  • Giving up the comfort and security of a solid-paying job in pursuit of more entrepreneurial endeavors.
  • Giving up their preferred place of residence to move closer to opportunity. 
  • Investing a huge amount of money for the possibility of greater returns. You might have big dreams, but you aren’t prepared to risk your financial stability by potentially losing money in a new venture.

2. Relationships

Some decisions call on us to sacrifice our relationships. Maybe this is a current business partner who won’t step with you into your future plans. Maybe it is the time you normally spend with family and friends, which you now need to invest in your business. We sometimes have to make the difficult decision to be less invested in certain relationships, whether for the short term or the long term.

3. Leisure / Instant Gratification

There are few endeavors that do not involve giving up your weekend plans, social life, extra sleep, hobbies, and vacation plans for a period of time.

Other Things We Have to Give Up/Let Go:

There are also many bad habits that we have to let go of to attain success. Although we can all agree that these are things we ought to let go of, it can feel like taking a risk because they are the norm we are used to. But change is a risk we must all take if we hope to get different results. In reality, holding onto these bad habits is the greater risk, as it jeopardises your ability to achieve your much-desired rewards. These things include:

Worry

There is so much we have no control over, and simply can’t influence no matter how hard we try. In such moments, or on such days, learning to let go of your worry and leaving it to God is the healthiest decision you can make to grow.

Fear of Failure

As humans, we have an innate desire to succeed. While this propels us to strive to attain the highest level we can, it can cripple us in one spot when we concentrate more on not failing than on doing what we can. Letting go of this fear of failure will help you to give whatever you are working at your best shot.

Regret

One constant in our life is the past and all of us have parts of it that we would rather have handled differently. Unfortunately, the truth is that we can’t go back to the past, and holding on to it can never help you achieve a better result: it simply leads to a downwards decline. Today, decide to let go of your regrets, while reflecting on what you can learn from the experience and changes you can make to become a better version of yourself. This helps keep your focus on the future, and draw you forwards to your goal.

Why is Risk Analysis Important? 

You might think that the idea of sacrifice is a given. When you say you’re committed to doing something, you’re automatically committing to giving something else up. But, in our experience, something happens when we fully acknowledge the sacrifices (big and small!) that we’re about to make, and realise that we’re still willing to pursue that particular goal. We are more dedicated and more likely to succeed when we are fully aware of all the sacrifices involved.

We have also realized that the process of naming the risks that come with pursuing certain ventures helps us decide if they are worth pursuing. When we decide the venture is valuable but the risks are too dear to take, having the risks identified in this way helps us come up with a point of compromise for the risk and the venture.Final Thoughts

What we are willing to give up to achieve our goals varies from individual to individual – we each have different definitions of needs and values. Despite these disparities, next time you set your goals and think about what you’ll have to do to achieve them, and don’t forget about what you’re prepared to give up. When deciding on the risks you are willing to take, we hope that you stand firm with your values and the things that matter the most to you, as nothing is worth risking them for.

Final Thoughts

What we are willing to give up to achieve our goals varies from individual to individual – we each have different definitions of needs and values. Despite these disparities, next time you set your goals and think about what you’ll have to do to achieve them, and don’t forget about what you’re prepared to give up. Become clear minded about the sacrifices necessary,yet stand firm with your values and the things that matter most.

$16,029 Profit on Beautiful Property in Gunnison, CO

This beautiful property in Gunnison, Colorado was brought to us by Steve and Tonsha. It is located just across the street from the Gunnison River, backs up to State land, and features an elevation high enough for some tremendous views.

We knew access to the property had to be improved and relocated, which would take several months, and no guarantee of approval. We also knew this was going to take a traffic engineering study, permitting from CDOT, and potentially a recorded easement from adjacent property owners. However, we were buying the property at a low enough basis to mitigate the potential risks.

The complications of this parcel ended up biting us some in the end, but ultimately we all made out pretty well – our target for our land investor was a $20k-30k profit. We missed the mark, but they ended up with $16,029.85, which was pretty good…all things considered.

From the date listed to sold and funds disbursed was 66 days.

We absolutely love working with Steve and Tonsha at Restful Retreats. They’re not only great investors, but they’re great people!

$19,357 Investor Profit on Quick Deal in Washington

This was a fun one! We recently purchased a property in Stevens County, Washington brought to us by one of our partners, Johnny.

A gorgeous, remote property with mature trees, nestled near the Columbia river and surrounded by forest land.

We let this property go in a quick sale that netted Johnny a $19,357 split.

We ended up cutting a deal with a neighbor, which provided them more room to expand their existing homesite.

We are so pumped for Johnny. Keep crushing it!

Florida Infill Lot Sold in Two Months

We recently executed a deal in Franklin County, Florida, where we purchased two side-by-side infill lots in an awesome location near water access.

Franklin County is located on Florida’s Forgotten Coast in the Gulf of Mexico.

We listed one of the properties earlier this year and it was sold in a little more than two months!

Our partner, Ajay was able to make a profit of just over $5,000 off his land deal.

Ajay is a savvy and motivated investor on top of his game.

It was a pleasure working with Ajay on this deal and we are looking forward to partnering on many more!

 

 

Total profit to Josh: $45,093.36. Let’s go!

We wanted to share with you a story about one of our Partners, Josh, who was able to make a profit of $45,093.36 off his land deal.

Josh came to us with this property in Marion County, Florida.

We listed this property at the end of May and had it under contract by the end of June.

We initially thought about the subdivide opportunity for this 12-acre property, but ultimately, decided against it. There was easy access off an improved county road and while it wasn’t an infill lot, there were several houses in close proximity, and power and water were already located at the property.

vacant land 8 (1)-Freedom Land Capital

We bought this during Florida’s rainy season, which lasts from mid-May to mid-October, so there were some concerns about how wet the property would get. Something to keep in mind – even if your parcel is not in a flood zone or wetlands, some buyers of Florida land may be a little apprehensive about how wet the land gets… especially if they’re considering putting crops and or livestock on the property. In this case, we were HIGH AND DRY!

3 (1) (1)-Freedom Land Capital

We’ll be the first to acknowledge that not many deals are as straightforward as this one. We were super pumped for Josh on this deal and are looking forward to funding many more.

We also want to be sensitive to the fact that many people in Florida are experiencing some extremely unfortunate circumstances due to Hurricane Ian – Naples, Ft. Meyers, and the rest of SW Florida is a beautiful area full of incredible people and we commend their resilience and pray for those areas affected.