Seth Williams is an experienced land investor, residential income property owner and commercial real estate banker. He is also the Founder of REtipster.com - a real estate investing blog providing real world guidance for part time real estate investors.

This interview is packed full of interesting information about buying and selling vacant lots….and the really cool thing is that most of it relates to buying and selling houses. 

Find out how he builds a mailing list that typically gets better than a 10% response rate along with the exact message he puts on his postcards.

Learn how he analyzes these deals so that he knows what he can offer and still make a great profit.

Seth also shares how he is able to sell these lots for passive income and make even more money.

There were several things that surprised me during the interview, like when he informed me that most people that buy lots from him aren’t going to build houses on them.  Find out why, in today’s episode.

Top 3 Things We Love (and Hate) About Our Businesses

Love

1. Freedom to do what I want, when I want

2. Large pay days (and thrill of the chase getting deals)

3. Working the business with my wife

Hate - strong word, dislike is more accurate

1. Fleas

2. Bad contractors

3. Dishonest investors

Never a dull moment…ups and downs…

Seth’s Loves and Dislikes

Love

1. Thrill of getting accepted offers - that it’s possible to get great deals

2. Passive Income

3. Large Paydays

Dislikes

1. Times when properties don’t sell immediately

2. Uncertainty of whether deals will be consistent in his pipeline

3. Cumbersome and time-consuming processes for buying and selling

He got started investing in real estate during college around 2005 and 2006.  The real estate market then was white hot and that made it difficult to get good deals.

Seth decided to start buying and selling land.

Seth finds his deals by tracking down people that own vacant lots that are delinquent on their property taxes.  He does this by contacting the tax assessors and treasures for the counties where the properties are and asks for a spreadsheet with the addresses and owner’s information.

Some will give out this information quickly and without hesitation and then some counties will make it very difficult, if not impossible.

He gets these records anywhere from free to up to 25 cents per record.

With records in hand, he then sends out post cards to the people that are delinquent on their property taxes.  He says he typically gets better than a 10% response rate (which is pretty damn good) with these postcards!