Real Estate Game Changers Show
Unveiling Land's Hidden Gems
In this episode of the Real Estate Game Changers show, Mike speaks with Councial Glenn about his journey into the real estate industry and his expertise in land entitlement. He shares his story from his early interest in architecture in high school to his successful career in real estate development. He explains the intricacies of land entitlement, including steps like wetland delineation, phase one environmental assessments, and working with civil engineers. Councial provides valuable insights into the strategies and processes he uses to identify, acquire, and sell entitled land, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decisions and partnerships. The episode covers topics like sourcing deals, the importance of utilities, and the differences between horizontal and vertical construction. Councial also addresses potential challenges and offers advice for those looking to enter the field of land entitlement.
In this episode of the Real Estate Game Changers show, Mike speaks with Councial Glenn about his journey into the real estate industry and his expertise in land entitlement. He shares his story from his early interest in architecture in high school to his successful career in real estate development. He explains the intricacies of land entitlement, including steps like wetland delineation, phase one environmental assessments, and working with civil engineers. Councial provides valuable insights into the strategies and processes he uses to identify, acquire, and sell entitled land, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decisions and partnerships. The episode covers topics like sourcing deals, the importance of utilities, and the differences between horizontal and vertical construction. Councial also addresses potential challenges and offers advice for those looking to enter the field of land entitlement.
All right, everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Game Changers show. I'm your host, Mike McKay, based in Jacksonville, Florida, and each and every week we do this show with people who are changing the game of real estate all over the country. For anyone in Jacksonville who's in sales and been thinking about a career in real estate, Reach out to me. We are looking for acquisitions, people for our team. You don't need to have real estate experience. Just if you're good at sales and you want to get in the real estate space, send me a DM on Instagram. This week on the show, we have Councial Glenn. Councial, welcome to the show.
Councial:Man, appreciate you guys having me, excited to be here.
Mike:Absolutely. So for the people who don't know you, could you tell us a little bit about how you got into real estate and how that's led you to where you are today?
Councial:Man, so I'm gonna go way back. All right. I like to say it started in ninth grade. So I grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and going into high school, I had to declare a major and so it was math reading, or drafting. I was pretty good at math, always levels above my grade level. I can't spell too well, so I didn't want to do reading. And my mom told me that drafting was like woodshop. So I signed up for drafting. That summer we had a two week program. They had us downtown Chicago drawing buildings, building popsicle stick buildings. I just fell in love with architecture. My 16th birthday, I had a drafting table with T square. I used to buy magazines and just draw houses. So I always knew I wanted to be in real estate in particular, like the G. C. Side building. And so started GCN, did a ton of rehabs, built quite a few houses in my, over my time as well. Then I started working for investors and I noticed they would always beat me down on price, but they will make a good amount of money when they sold the property. So I learned about fix and flip. And then a good friend of mine was wholesaling. And again, I'm, a little bit of a competitive person and He made about 60 grand that year, just part time wholesale. And I told myself, if he could do 60, I know I can do it. And the rest is history, man. I sold my first wholesale deal with actually a piece of land. It was an infield lot. The owner, it was a friend of mine. And he told me. Whatever you can sell it for, you can have half of it. I put up a sell by owner sign in the yard. The next day, a gentleman called me, paid me a hundred bucks to take it out, and we settled on 10 grand and sold it the next week. And I was hooked.
Mike:Wow, and were you were you targeting land when you were looking for your first wholesale deal? Or did you just was it because you stumbled into it?
Councial:Yeah, I think it was because the gentleman that I was talking to, he's like a mentor to me. He knew I was getting into real estate and he had some land he wanted to sell. And to be honest with you, my first probably six transactions were either pieces of land he owned or controlled. So once he saw me sell that first one, he gave me two more, then he gave me two more. So we sold about five or six for him or just something, land he controlled or owned, and yeah, the rest was history. Once I started that, I ran into a YouTube video by a guy named Max Maxwell. He was in Winston Salem at the time, which is like 30, 45 minutes from where I live and started driving for dollars. And the rest is history. Driving for dollars, Google Voice, and a spreadsheet is how I started.
Mike:Nice. And
Councial:yeah.
Mike:How long were you in the wholesale inside the business before you really started on land? Okay.
Councial:a good two years. So I started. And 18 wholesale in the very end of 18 December was when I sold that piece of that lot 19. I was really just building systems. And I think I got up to Mojo dialer and then started doing some cold calling, hiring a few VAs 2020. We hit it hard, man. It was a great year for us. And then 21, for whatever reason, when I pulled my list at my local county assessor's office. I think we did two or three bedrooms plus, and for some reason they had land listed as 64 bedrooms. And so I got a ton of land on my list and I would just skip over it because it wasn't something like a wholesale or flip. And I remember coming across this one particular address. I knew where the street was and I knew what it was around. And I was like, man, it has to be something we can do with this. Made a couple phone calls to a guy I knew that did some development. I didn't know he developed I just knew he built houses and then he taught me the whole land entitlement process.
Mike:And is that the point that you decided to make that your focus, or did you keep going with the wholesale business for a
Councial:I don't know. I mean I kept going with the wholesaling for a while. I didn't officially turn everything off on wholesaling until Q4 last year. Like I turned off all texting, cold calling. Haven't done any of that. But no, I just started getting more land under contract and mimicking the same process that I just learned.
Mike:What made you at the end of last year, finally make that decision to say, I'm only going to focus on land.
Councial:I had a couple of things closing and just seeing some of those checks as opposed to the wholesaling. It was so much changing, at least with me and what the data we were getting and what we were using, our contact rates suck. We were having to change numbers so many times. We were skip tracing 30, 000, people a month and just maybe 14 leads and 10 of those were cold leads. This wasn't working. It was just throwing money at something that wasn't producing any results. Plus, I was just falling more in love with the land entitlement game. I call it a blue ocean. It's not a ton of people that do it. And once you, we work the system, have it down to a 17 step process, just made sense to lock in on it and not try to do, the master, the jack of all trades, I just, let me just master this one and develop some things around it that can help. Cause obviously, land entitlement takes some time to wholesaling, I've done deals. Like I said, my first one was less than two weeks, normally, 30, 60, 90 days, you can, from the time you talk contactedly, you can normally get a deal turned over, but that's not definitely not the case with entitlement. But once a few of those cash in and cash flow is not a problem, it was easy to make that decision.
Mike:Yeah, so you were doing like some of both and then you kindly made the decision at the end of 24 to just do land entitlement.
Councial:Yup. I had probably seven flips. I got two left that were maybe a week away from being done with. And unless I just something just comes across my desk or something crazy. I don't know how many more of those we'll do. With the land entitlement has taught us some other strategies. We bought a house in high point, North Carolina, which is, 15 minutes from where I live and we subdivided it and got five additional infield lots. And so what we're looking to do now outside of entitlement is yeah, we'll flip that house and then we'll build new construction and, You just sell them and keep them, refine them and keep them as rentals. So that's where I'm headed long term.
Mike:Okay, and then for the people maybe we should dive in for the people who are newer and don't know what is land entitlement.
Councial:Yeah. Yeah. So land entitlement, a lot of people confuse it with zoning. And so if I'm able to, a lot of people think that if I'm able to get, eight, 10 acres of land zone to build, three, eight, five houses a acre, that's entitlement. That's just rezoning. Entitlement process is, getting all your civil engineering. Drawn up and approved by the governor municipality, whether that's the city county or whatever the municipality, it could be, but that's getting all your erosion control, grading water, sewer, curb and gutter, all of those things drawn up by civil engineer and approved by the city along with getting it land survey phase one done. Wetlands delineated if you have any and any other things that may be required by the governing municipality. That's typically depending on the area, 69 12 month process. If you go to Raleigh Durham is 18 or 24 months. But It's getting all of that stuff approved and pulling the permits for the project.
Mike:Really? Oh, I didn't realize this as far as pulling the permits. I never realized that.
Councial:Yeah, we normally pull the grading and erosion control permits.
Mike:Okay. And what's is, are you guys like taking that and then selling that off to a builder? Or are you trying to take these projects all the way to the end?
Councial:Yeah, so three of them I've taken from the standpoint of entitlement to where we actually do what's drawn on the plans, cutting all the trees down, the grading, putting utilities in. And that's, the horizontal construction. I haven't done anything vertical yet. But I love to sell the paper product before we ever cut one blade of grass or one tree. Let's sell that project to a developer or a builder and make and get out and go find another one to do
Mike:Can you, for the people who don't know, can you explain the difference between horizontal and vertical construction?
Councial:Yeah horizontals normally everything that's under the ground or at ground level vertical is actually building the house itself And the horizontal stuff has to be done Before you can ever do the vertical.
Mike:Yeah. And what kind of what kind of land are you targeting? Is there a certain buy box that you look at?
Councial:No typically I'm looking for factors or characteristics, if that makes sense. So I'm looking for donuts. Typically I'm looking for a big piece of land surrounded by development, call it a donut because that's the hole in the area. I'm normally looking for 10 acres depending on the zoning, 10 acres plus the smallest one I've ever done that first piece of land that I told you about, it was actually 17 acres. No, 19. I'm sorry. And we bought 8. 76 of it just because it's the way it divided. It was the 8. 76 is perfect. But I'm looking for donuts and I'm looking for capacity for water and sewer in North Carolina, sept well and septic is a lot different than it is in Texas because the dirt quality is a lot different. So I don't like to mess with septic in North Carolina, just because I've had sites where it was 75 acres. I knew I was going to get at least 50 houses. We got the soil scientists out 125 bucks an acre, two sites, two houses was the max that I can build on 75 acres. And that's just sometimes how the cookie crumbles with dirt in North Carolina. So I said from that point on, I don't want to buy anything that doesn't have water and sewer capacity, not only water and sewer.
Mike:how do you know if something has water and sewer capacity?
Councial:Typically, you could tell by how close the neighboring communities are, how close the houses are. Normally, you know what we do in North Carolina, if it's more than If it's well and septic, you're normally on an acre or more site. But if these lots are, 0. 16 and 0. 23 and it's a cluster of them, it's a high likelihood that they have water and sewer. There also are some layers that you can add on some of the county GIS websites to check for water and sewer. And then it all comes with all that fails, call the county and ask them, Hey, does this address have water and sewer capacity?
Mike:Yeah.
Councial:Yeah, that always works
Mike:And outside of just looking for water and sewer capacity, right? Is there any other reason you like the doughnut?
Councial:because that's normally an infield lot. And if it's an infield lot, that infrastructure is already there. That's and I also love like being where stuff is coming. So typically you'll see cities expand out. And so if you can be in the area where it's coming and it has already been, that's always a good sign because that's normally where no new communities are formed. That normally helps with pricing as well because. The older houses won't lower the comps for the new construction because on the outskirts and where things are expanding, everything is new.
Mike:So all your competition has got new builds to that makes sense. What else? What else do you look out for when you're looking for these land entitlement deals?
Councial:I'm typically looking to see what builders are. So I love to use land vision. And there's a filter on there. Or layer where you can see exactly what developers are building, where put their icon of the company, right on the map and you can see that. Yeah, absolutely. You'll see that they'll give you the community name, number of houses, price point. And, if I find some land is surrounded by two or three builders, obviously, that means it's probably a good area. Number two, I got three potential great buyers because they're building right there already.
Mike:Yeah. So are you sourcing these deals off market or I guess how are you sourcing them?
Councial:Both, off and on. I've bought off Craigslist, I've bought off Facebook Marketplace, I've bought off LoopNet, Zillow, I've also gone old fashioned and pulled lists. I've also targeted, like literally just scouring the GIS, looking for that donut, seeing a piece of parcel, that looks great, verifying utilities and skip tracing that single individual owner and calling them up.
Mike:No. What are most of the people that are selling you the land? What are they currently doing with the land before you buy it? Nothing. Okay.
Councial:Nothing. They're normally just paying taxes and keeping them owed so they don't get fined by the city. One of the things I love about land is there's normally not an emotional attachment to it, they didn't grow up there It's not mom and dad's house. It's not Where they had Christmas and Thanksgiving and, where they mark their height every year, it's normally just land, and they're just fine with selling it and they're just fine with it taking a long time to sell it because they don't need it for anything.
Mike:Yeah, so how long are you typically like making these contracts so that you can get through that whole process of everything you talked about?
Councial:Yeah. I'm normally actually two, 270 days and I build in my addendum to 45 day extensions. If I were in a different area, like Raleigh, I will ask for more time just because I know the entitlement process is a little bit lengthier. But yeah, I'm normally trying to get a year under contract. A year of runway to be able to do the entitlements.
Mike:yeah. And then is there is there some steps that you take early on to know I don't know what you would call them in land entitlement, but like kind of the quick hit ah, this isn't going to work that you find out maybe in the first 30 days or something like that?
Councial:Great question, man. One of the first things I do is get the wetlands delineated just to make sure we don't have any issues with wetlands. Second thing I do is a phase one, environmental phase one. That's cute. Some deals for me here recently the phase one coming back, not favorable. And then the third thing I do is have an engineer drop a sketch plan based on the wetlands map. Once I get those three things, by that time, I've already verified capacity for water and sewer. Things of that nature. Once I do those three, I can then go and I honestly, I can go and sell that project with just that sketch plan. I normally know what I have pretty early on after I do those three things.
Mike:What is a wetlands delineation.
Councial:So it's typically when you have we have a company called Pilot Environmental. They come out and if there's a creek or something running through the land, a low area or water flowing at any point, they tell you, What impacts that may have and literally it just limits where you can build or disturb land or dirt. So if my wetlands are Depending on how if they may not be any, if there's no creek the land is sitting high You don't have any wetland issues, but sometimes you do. But it's just like the Army Corps engineers protecting those areas from disturbance, debris, and things of that nature.
Mike:gotcha. So that can impact, like the number of homes that you'd be able to build,'cause you can't build within is a certain distance of those things or,
Councial:A hundred percent, my first deal went from 72 homes to 26 because of wetlands.
Mike:yeah.
Councial:Yeah, very
Mike:said after that you do a phase one environmental. So what are you looking for when that comes back?
Councial:man. I'm just making sure it's no buried oil tanks. When we're not downstream from a cleaners that had a buried tank and that, if there are any industrial buildings around it, we don't have any issues with that. All three of those things have happened. That's why I named was specifically we found buried oil tanks or somebody used to dump old tires on land. I've also been within, I think it's 400 or 500 feet of a cleaners. That's normally automatic test. Situation. And I've had it that we had 193 acres here recently with water sewer. It was around three plants and one of them made a fire retardant that is known to cause cancer with firefighters. So that was an instant no go. My my builder who we were looking to sell it to said, man, it'll be better for an atomic bomb went off on that site just because all the issues. Yeah. That phase one can let you know what you got environmentally. And if sometimes you, you can mitigate that, but. You want to try to if so, just avoid that at all costs. So that was a moment early on, our money wasn't hard that we put down. So we instantly exited that contract just because the phase one was too, it was too bad. It was no way we would build anything there.
Mike:Yeah. How long do you typically have in a, land entitlement deal contract to figure out if the deal is viable or not before you lose your deposit?
Councial:Yeah. Normally I ask in six months before my money goes hard, but within 30, 45 days, I know if the deal is viable or not. By that time I've done that phase one, we just talked about. I've had the wetlands delineated, and I've already gotten a sketch plan from my engineer. And one of the things we like to do is take those three items, and go to whoever our end buyer may be, or who we want them to be, and say, hey, this is what we got. Here's our sketch plan. We're going to take it through the entitlement process. And typically we can get a LOI and execute it with that end buyer and get a contract to purchase and have money in escrow. And that way we got a guarantee end buyer is just off to the races from there.
Mike:Gotcha. And then, but you still continue to take it through the process. You don't sell it to them at that point. You still keep, you keep going.
Councial:Yep. I keep going. So now that we've done all that, it's time for our engineer to have our sketch review meeting with the city or county. It's time for us to get a topo survey. And then let the engineer do his thing which can take months, but let them do their whole design And get that thing done.
Mike:Yeah. And then like, how are you deciding, let's say you have this piece of land, let's call it 10 acres, for example, and you've got those first three things back and you're trying to bring it out to some buyers. Like how are you deciding like how much to ask for that property because it's not like a house, right? It's not quite as simple or maybe it is maybe I just don't know
Councial:It is a little bit So there are ways that we can look and see what raw land has sold for from entitlement side Like using our business journal things of that nature typically I actually have a calculator a land entitlement calculator that calculates what you should ask for based on what development costs are and the finished price of the home so Ballpark if I know a house is going to sell That this community and i'm entitling they're going to sell three hundred thousand dollar houses I know that I can get 20 to 25 Of the sales price of that house for a fully developed lot meaning I did all the horizontals So i'm selling that lot for 60 to 75 thousand 1, 000 finished ready to go. So if I still say if I call a few developers and say hey man right now it's charging It's costing me 40, 000 for development. All right, so I can say all right. I got 75 total minus 40 for development You know that leaves me with 35 I want to let the developer make some money So let's mark out 10, maybe 15, 000 for him. That leaves me 20, 000 per lot that I can sell this land for. So I take that end number, multiply by the number of lots, and that's typically what I sell for. And that's been being very true that we're in the mid to high 20s of what we're selling in title land for in North Carolina. Now, depending on where you are and what home prices you're selling for, that number can definitely increase.
Mike:then sometimes you're doing a horizontal and sometimes not, or
Councial:Yeah. Yeah, man, I think it was just, it sounded cool to do it in horizontals and we're going through it, we're getting it done, but I love selling in title. You don't have to worry about takedown schedules from the builder, rain delays I mean you, you just get the project done on paper and sell it and run to the next one, as opposed to being in another two, two and a half years, because some of these sites take nine months a year to develop, then I have to sell the lot on a takedown schedule predetermined by the buyer per the contract. Yeah,
Mike:What is it? What's a takedown schedule?
Councial:literally the builder will tell you, Hey, out of these 66 lots you're developing, I'm buying 22. In quarter one, 22 and quarter two, 23 and quarter three, 22 and quarter three. They literally break down how many lots they're buying and when they're buying them. Normally it's every three to six months. They'll do a takedown. So, if it's six months, that's a year and a half of selling plus a year of development.
Mike:they don't want to, is that because they only have the capacity to build so many at a time or sell so many at a time.
Councial:Builders are a lot smarter than we are, man. They know what they're doing. I think they can, they could build all of them at once if they want to, but. They trying to hedge their bets, let's make sure this community is going to sell well before we buy all of them. Because if they buy 22 lots and it takes them a year to sell 22, guess what's not happening? They're not doing that second takedown.
Mike:Yeah,
Councial:And that's the thing with development, man. Based on the success of the builder, it can be a great ride or a terrible ride for you as a developer.
Mike:You that's why you prefer to come.
Councial:to sell entitled.
Mike:Yeah, sell it early and let them handle that. All right. Okay.
Councial:figure that out. Cash me out, get me out the deal. And y'all can figure the rest out. I understand. I'm leaving. Some money on the table, but I'm making pretty good money.
Mike:yeah. so you were you saying before? So that's a 6 to 9 months to typically sell the entitled land is what you're typically looking at. Or.
Councial:Yeah, typically from when I get on the contract. I like to be I like to say normally it's 9 to 12 months I've seen it faster, but typically from the point we get on the contract 9 to 12 months later You should be able to have it fully entitled and ready to sell.
Mike:Okay. Okay. What makes your process of entitling land different than other people who are doing it?
Councial:Great question, man One of the things is like we said that within that first 30 45 days You We've identified our end buyer and we normally have at least the LOI, if not a fully executed contract with deposit from that builder. So that's one of the things that helps us and makes us a little bit different is just the process. We've just also been able to do pretty well at developing partnerships, man. We have a free community that we don't talk about land entitlement on Facebook. Okay. Yeah, we have a course, we got some people that, Hey man, I got a project. I want to do it. Can you help me? Yeah, we have a great vehicle to be able to partner with individuals, a quarterback, a deal with them, standing right by side, like Brett Favre and Rogers type thing and allow them to learn while earned while earning I like it better than, selling you a course with modules. Guess what? You're still going to call and ask questions. Let's just do a deal, man.
Mike:Yeah, that's cool. So is that only in North Carolina, though? Or do you, will you do projects with people like all over the country?
Councial:I got a partner in Spokane, Washington. I got a partner in Florida, Texas, Boston. I'm in NC. Great thing about entitlement is, it's still the same process no matter where you are.
Mike:Okay, I didn't realize that it was pretty similar across all the
Councial:Yeah, pretty similar. Most of the time it's the same builders. Yeah, man. It's, a little nuances are different, but for the most part, It's the same game.
Mike:Yeah,
Councial:You may not have wetlands issues in Texas that you have in North Carolina, it's the same process.
Mike:Yeah, and then what do you think allows you guys to get to that point in the first 30 to 45 days where you are able to identify a buyer that, like other people, they're not able to do it that quickly.
Councial:I don't think other people know they can do it that quickly. From the standpoint of that you can get land under contract with the Empire with just a sketch plan. You don't have to have it fully entitled. I've listed land on the MLS. Not entitled via a sketch plan and gotten another contract. Just a strategy we like to use. If I have my end buyer in hand, in tow, it makes you run a little bit faster to the finish line and it secures you knowing. Hey, if I spend this 50, 60, 100, 000 on a title, I know I'm going to get it back times X because we have this inbuyer under contract.
Mike:So a lot of people, they're waiting until they get through the whole entitlement process to start looking for a buyer.
Councial:I've seen it done before. I would never do it.
Mike:Fair enough. How did you like learn about all the land entitlement stuff?
Councial:And I asked a mentor of mine and what he did was a genius move. And this is what I took that from him. He'll give me a task. And if I came back with that task completed, he'll give me the next step and then the next step and then the next step. And so he eventually I did all the steps And i'm just going through the process so many times. We probably I probably have 13 active entitlement deals another seven on top of that. They were jvn with people across the country. This is probably my Fourth podcast i've done talking entitlement in the last 30 days You I've given talks on entitlement at Mastermind. So just being or trying to establish myself, let me not say being, trying to establish myself as the subject matter expert in an area just brought up many ideas. I think we forget some of the hustle that we started. At least I started with this wholesaling and some of the same stuff I use right now. One of the things that I thought was really cool and wholesaling is having an open house. You get all your buyers in, so all right, that's my competition. That's my competition, so I can't lowball them. I got to come with a real offer, right? My version of an open house with entitlement is listed on the MLS or LoopNet because everybody sees it. Not only does everybody see it, buyers that I don't even know are in my market see it. That's how we met the family office out of Boston. They found it on MLS. There's no listing, no list, nothing I could have bought that would have got me in touch with somebody with, that kind of money. There's no way I would have found them outside of listing. And so instead of having an open house, sending it, blasting it out to your cash buyers. Put it on the MLS. So it's the same concept in wholesaling, just applied it to land entitlement.
Mike:Yeah. So is that like typical that you like, have in your agreement with the seller that you have the right to list it and all that? Is that like something that you're always looking for?
Councial:Yeah, that's something we added within the last 12 months that we have the right and ability to list it at a higher price than what we have it on a contract for.
Mike:Yeah. Gotcha. What if other people are thinking about getting into entitlement? What are some things that they should focus on early on when they're 1st, getting into it.
Councial:Understanding the process, I think is something you should focus on. And then just like we talk about with any real estate. Transaction, man. Don't fall in love with the deal. Fall in love with the numbers, man. Yes, it may be in your backyard and you know that, Walmart's coming and da. Fall in love with the numbers. Not the deal. You know, that's one thing I've seen plenty of people, man, I know this area is gonna boom. It ain't booming now. Let's, let's just fall in love with the numbers, man. No, it may make data driven decisions and not decisions based off emotion. That's one thing. And then, whether it's myself, other individuals that are, in the space, find somebody you can learn from, it's already done and have been there. That's the cheat code to any area in life is finding someone has been where you want to go with it. Can they can speed up your timeframe to get there.
Mike:What are you doing or what things are you looking at in order to make data driven decisions when you're looking at these deals?
Councial:I'm looking at the days on market for a new construction homes. I'm looking at how many builders are in the market. I'm looking at how many lots they are buying and what price are they buying at. Some of that stuff isn't data, it's having conversations. I had a conversation with a guy today, man and when I first started Atlanta Titleman, 60 to 65, 000 for a finished lot, two, three years ago, good money. Now it's 80, 85, 000. That's, that's, this is entry level housing. Just got off the phone with a buddy of mine. He's at, he's getting contracts for 115, 000 for finish line.
Mike:Wow.
Councial:So in the span, when I first got, excuse me, started two, three years ago, it's almost doubled in what you can get for a finished lot. The price to develop hasn't doubled. And again, this is just a small sample size in North Carolina. Obviously, there are some mitigating factors like what's coming. You have a huge Toyota battery plant. It's, I think, four billion bucks. All the ancillary companies that come along with that a new airline come to the airport So it's just plenty coming in this area One of the things i've always tried to do is these companies are worth billions of dollars and publicly traded If they're not panicking i'm not panicking if they're steady if they're steady buying, you know again these they're forecasting They're buying lots of putting stuff on the contract for things a year and two years from now So they're people that they're paying or seeing something that It isn't always being portrayed in the new cycle. So I try to keep the noise down and watch what's happening with those national and publicly traded companies. They're increasing what they're buying for, so they know something's coming or they know that things aren't doom and gloom as some people may try to make it seem like, we've had high interest rates for a long time now and things are still moving off market.
Mike:Yeah. Gotcha. And is that just looking at like public data stuff, see what, and having conversations or where else can someone pull that information from? Okay.
Councial:Combination of both, normally most areas have a business journal that lists real estate transactions and you can typically. You have to read through it and see what land is selling for and you'll know what's entitled and normally the bigger projects will get a headline or two. Also, man, again, just once you develop or figure out who's who in the market, one of the things I love to do if I'm entering a new market is I go on loop net and see which broker has the most listings. That's the guy I want to talk to because he has a pulse on what's going on, what's happening, what things are selling for. And again, one of the things I love about retirement, I don't have to know anything about engineering, what the market's doing. I just got to be smart enough to get with the right people and the people that are smarter than me and know what I don't know and leverage those relationships.
Mike:How how involved do you have to be? I know you hand off a lot of those things, but how involved do you have to be once you're in contract and handing off the, like in that process before you sell it.
Councial:Yeah, outside of a contentious rezoning, As long as you can make phone calls, send emails, write checks, or send wires, that's all you need to do. If you want to attend the meetings in person, you can. Like some of the sketch plan review meetings normally those are via zoom But as long as you can do those things, you don't need to be heavily involved my first ever rezoning. I didn't go to the hearing. We won unanimous unanimously My second rezoning totally different story Had to have four neighborhood meetings. We lost the first one. We had to go to city council Hire an attorney we wind up winning it eight to one But there's no way I could have done that without physically being Present like me and my attorney literally went door knock and talking to neighbors to try to drum up support for them for the approval. Now, if you're doing something and that donut area, cause it was a donut and the neighbors did not want to see a an apartment complex up in that area you may have some issues. Normally on the outskirts where things are spreading, you won't have any issues. Like I said, outside of a contentious rezoning, you don't need to be physically in the same state. I have some land that we're selling on the 21st of this month. I've been by one time. I've literally seen the land once. I've never attended any meetings with the city for this. My engineers handled all of that. Yeah, so you don't have to be on site. You don't have to be in the same state. As long as you hire the right people, you're fine.
Mike:how did you go about finding the right people to hire?
Councial:Great question, man. Another story I like to tell if you ever go to a barbershop on a Saturday. And it's busy and there's one barber with no one in a chair. It's probably not a good barber. So when you're calling engineers, if someone can hop on your stuff immediately, probably not a good engineer. Same thing with trades people. A good towel guy is normally a book towel guy. Good carpenter is normally a booked carpenter. A good engineer is normally a booked engineer. So I normally make a few calls based on some suggestions. And or Google and just ask, Hey man, I'm looking at doing a development. Have you done anything to size? Can you tell me about your last few, anything you can send me? How quickly can you get on my project? Normally I want to hear, Hey man, we're about 30, 45 days, maybe 60 days out before I can look at it. Great. That means he's busy, which is cool because I want someone, I don't want anybody to jump on it right away. That's normally not a good sign. And I've been, I've just had bad experiences with engineers who are readily available. I w I don't mind waiting a couple of weeks or a month. Before you can get me a sketch plan, that's fine.
Mike:Yeah, and then besides Googling them, like you said I think you got them from somewhere else. Was it referrals? Or I guess, where are you sourcing them? Besides just searching online?
Councial:Yeah outside of online, one of the things I've done in times past is called the planning department at the city. Hey man, which engineer do you guys like to work with? Oh, we love this one. Do not work with this one. They're going to tell you all the bad apples, and they're going to tell you all the good ones. They love to, talk about the bad ones and they love to promote the good ones. That's a trick we used in the past and it's worked out pretty well.
Mike:Yeah, wow. And then what about the other people that you need to find, the, he said, the phase one guys and all that, like, how do you find someone who's good at that?
Councial:Yeah, normally just a company that you can google. That's normally not an issue, a phase one company. Sometimes the people that do the wetlands can do the phase one as well. The key is the the surveyor. So I normally, once I find an engineer that I like, I normally ask him, which surveyor does he like to work with? That way I know I have a great working relationship between those two,
Mike:Why is it so important to have a great working relationship between those two?
Councial:because a lot of the things the engineer is going to need. From the survey, they have to have a lot of communication so they have to map out the wetland areas. They have to get the topo survey from them. They also sometimes have to get. Like the the row inlays they have to lay out and stake some of the areas where if we haven't a like doing a soil sample, the engineer has to lay that out. They just have to communicate a lot back and forth. And so you want to make sure that your engineer, who is probably your most important piece, has worked with somebody they like. Not somebody you pick.
Mike:Got it. Any other red flags that people should look out for if they're besides someone not being busy, if they're reaching out to an engineer or besides the
Councial:Yeah, just making sure that they yeah Those are two good red flags But if they can't show you sample work or tell you a recent project that they worked on or a recent build or developer They work with don't do it.
Mike:Is any of that stuff like publicly available? Can you see the engineer who did a project like in county records or.
Councial:No, definitely not county records There are some records like normally when I submit for a ncg01. It's like a eros not eros control It's a wetland permit, here in the area I normally, when I submit for that, I normally get calls from publications and people trying to get data for what's coming, like they ask me what my price point is, when we're expecting to start construction, when we're finishing. It's like a development publication. That's public record, but it only lists me as the owner. Nothing really lists the engineer until it's time to pull permits. And obviously when they pull permits on the title block, it lists who the engineer is.
Mike:What's the what's the largest deal that you sold?
Councial:So we got one and I'm preface this saying we have, I haven't closed on it yet, but it's 24 acres. We bought this and we couldn't get it under contract for long. The seller was in a little bit of a pickle 150, 000. And we have it under contract to sell hopefully Q3 this year for 1. 4.
Mike:Wow. Okay.
Councial:Yeah. My smallest one is actually one I'm partnered on with a person that we're closing this month. We have it under contract, have not bought it for 300, 000, and we're selling for 680, 000. Spent about 55, 000 on entitlement. And that's a small one.
Mike:What is the typical, I guess it probably varies a lot, but what is the typical cost to run that entitlement process?
Councial:I normally like to say budget 1, 200 to 1, 500 per lot for entitlement. So if it's, 30 lots, multiply that times 1, 200 or 1, 500, that's a good budgetary number for what you should expect to pay for the full entitlement processing.
Mike:And those first three steps that you're doing that could rule out a deal, like how much are you having to spend to get those three done?
Councial:I normally under five, 6, 000 for those first three steps. And that normally lets me know if I have a project before I start spending crazy money.
Mike:Yeah. Gotcha. Anything else? Cause I don't know that much about the land entitlement, but is there anything else that people should know about land entitlement that I haven't asked you?
Councial:No, man you asked some great questions. I think the other key or thing I would add to that man is if they're interested in learning, obviously joined in Facebook community that we have is free. We do teach on that twice a month. We teach on entitlement. We talked about our process. We talked about finding a buyer. We talked about some ninja tricks. No, I think you did pretty well. Good question.
Mike:All right. There's always two questions that I do like to ask at the end of the show. And the first one's not fun. It's what's the. Craziest or most uncomfortable situation you have ever experienced in a real estate deal.
Councial:All right, craziest or most uncomfortable situation I think the craziest was my My when we had to get the land rezoned. Man, I just I wasn't ready for people to oppose me It was just crazy some of the things that people were coming up with For why this project wouldn't be a good project. So there was a daycare You Like three parcels over from the land. And so they said that, Hey man, the kids in the daycare are gonna jump the daycare fence, climb through the woods, jump, jump the community fence, and then jump the fence to the pool, and jump in the pool and drown. It was just crazy. I had to sit and listen to all this. It was like a two and a half hour rezoning hearing, man. And just some of the stuff that they came up with to try and justify not letting us build our project was just wild. It was crazy because you really thought the people were crazy. That was probably just the craziest man, just because. You realize what links people go to try to keep something out.
Mike:Yeah, for sure. And second question I always ask is if you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice when you were looking for your first real estate deal. Knowing what you know now, what would you tell yourself?
Councial:That's a very specific question. I was gonna go a different way one of things man one of my first real estate transactions I had a I think it was a 12 or 14 unit apartment complex on the contract for 325, 000 and I was, I'm talking green behind the ears and real estate, but I knew I had a deal. So I was trying to sell it for 400, 000 only had two or three people that said they could maybe do it. And my contract ran out and I, I just followed the property and two weeks later it sold for 400, 000. Which was the price I was trying to sell it for. And so I think one of the things I would tell myself in looking for my first deal is, man, you're on the right track. Cause I had the formula, I had the price. I just didn't have the people. They have the network. I wasn't in the game long enough. Again, I was looking forward to that 75, 000 assignment fee, I just didn't have enough time in to have the network and, the community around me to be able to dispose something of that size. So I would just tell myself you're on the right track, man, because that, that was discouraging for a while, but when I think about it, it's reaffirming. Because it's sold for the exact price that I was trying to sell it for.
Mike:Gotcha. I'm curious now, you said you were going to take it another direction, so I'm curious what you were, the other direction you were going to go.
Councial:Oh, real estate advice that I would give myself, like not on my first deal, but when I first started, don't sell anything.
Mike:Oh, okay.
Councial:I sold a bunch of flips over the last three years. I wish I would have kept every last one of but again, that's just hindsight
Mike:Sure.
Councial:Yeah,
Mike:Yeah, I got a couple of those, more than a couple.
Councial:Yeah, man. Look that one. I was like, man, I made a good penny Then I it's doubled in price by now. We made 72 grand off of it, but it's worth double Right now and that was less than three years ago
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. If people want to reach out to you after the show, if they have questions or maybe they're interested in, joining your Facebook group so they can learn a little bit more about Entitling Land, how can they go about getting in touch with you?
Councial:Yeah. man, hopefully you got the link I think our facebook group is six figure Entitlement deals to real estate investors. Instagram, it's Count F Glen, C-O-U-N-C, IA, LFG, ln n you could go to our website as well and title land.com. I'm sure that savvy tech people at Game Changers will have all that information linked LinkedIn, but I think the Facebook group and the website would be pretty cool. Of course, you could always follow me on Insta. But yeah, that Facebook group is probably gold.
Mike:Cool. Awesome, man. Thanks for being on the show. This is great.
Councial:Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.
Mike:For sure.