How much money do you think a new land investor should have set aside to pursue the land business these days?
I know the costs of everything have gone up, and the response rates have gone down. It also depends on the market, property type, strategy and all that.
Even with all those variables, if you saw a newbie getting into this business today, how much cash do you think they should be armed with to have a fighting chance?
Hi Don. Are you going to send mailers to acquire leads? How are you going to get your leads?
@Doyle_Cook I’m thinking of a few different scenarios:
In each scenario, I would be targeting properties worth $50K and up - not messing around with the smaller stuff.
All sound good Don.
On the land business, I began in November 2024. I started with cold callers. I was spending close to $3K/month for data, scraping, CRMs, and the cold calling company I subscribed to. I did that for 4 months. One solid lead that still hasn’t closed, but I expect it to close at the end of this month. That lead will make $7,500. So cold calling was a financial loss to me. Your experience may be different.
In March 2025, I began direct mail (500 mailers per week). I’m spending $2K/month with the process system I am using to pull data and to mail the leads + the cost of the CRM. I have one solid lead that I expect to close on that will make $10K.
So at least from my perspective, you’re going to need $2K - $3K/month times however many months you’re going to give yourself to test different methods.
I hope this helps!
Thank you @Doyle_Cook for that breakdown. Very informative!
Hi Don,
Starting with texting and cold calling is a smart move—both are highly effective when done right. For texting, I’d recommend Smarter Contact, and for cold calling, Readymode is a great tool to get started.
In my experience, dedicating around $2.5K/month for your campaigns can yield surprisingly strong results, especially when targeting properties in the $50K+ range. The initial success often motivates investors to upscale their efforts quickly.
If you’re interested, I’d be happy to chat and share some KPIs and stats from similar strategies I’ve worked on—it might give you a clearer picture of what to expect and how to maximize your ROI. Let me know!
It’s a hard question to answer @donyost because luck plays a role here, and your luck is proportionate to which market you’re working in and how high your offers are, and on it goes.
Knowing what I know about the biz now, I would be comfortable starting with $8-$10k, assuming I had a good bank or funder lined up, ready to take down whatever I find.