Seth and Jaren did a great job going over the possible effects of a possible recession (yes, that’s a “double vague”) for land flipping. My biggest regret from 2008 -2010 was sitting on the sidelines and wondering if I should buy some great houses from desperate owners. It was a multi-million dollar mistake that I didn’t act. I’m better educated about REI, much more practiced in capital market investing, and better funded now to jump when the market values drop. There’s no way to predict a bottom - I just buy at a point where I’m comfortable spending that amount and if the price keeps dropping I don’t worry about it. Like the Podcast says, the value of land will go up eventually no matter how bad the market sentiment is. Get ready to adapt. As young Jaren said, you wait a long time for exceptional market opportunities to come along.
@laurie well said. I’m planning to keep it simple while we head into this recession… Buy cheaper and sell cheaper if need be.
@laurie thanks for listening! I hear you.
I definitely acted during the last recession, but I wish I’d had more disposable cash (and courage) to do more than I did.
It was a time of insane opportunity… I’m not sure if we’ll see an environment quite like that during the next recession, but if we do, I’ll be ready. 
One thing to consider is timing. The housing market peaked somewhere in the summer of 2006. The bottom of the housing market occurred in early to mid 2010 - 4 years later. If you had stepped into the market in 2007 that would have been a bad mistake because prices had a long way to go to the downside - especially in vacant land. Vacant land in hot areas had HUGE price swings.
I was just researching historic sale prices of acre lots in a neighborhood I invest in. In 2006, sales averaged $45k, with a peak sale of $80k June 2006. In 2007, prices started to go down, but were still relatively high - in the $40k’s early in the year dropping into the $30k’s later. In 2014, land investors were buying these lots for $1,000. Even today, prices have not climbed to those all time highs of 2006. The highest recent sale price I’ve seen in that neighborhood is $20k. They were retailing for $6k a year and a half ago.
So the takeaway is that timing is important because huge crashes take a long time to play out. If you go all in at the wrong time, it could turn out poorly.
With that said, I don’t believe that this is going to be a severe downturn. I think this is going to be a blip on the radar. The Mother of All Financial Crashes is coming, but I think that central banks will be able to kick the can down the road a few more years.