Serious News · Free Guide
Get Your Land Sold
The sell-side tactics behind a $606K exit in the hardest land market in decades. Fifteen field-tested plays, ordered by effort and cost, from the team that ran every one of them with its own capital at stake.
Chris Duff
Managing Partner, Serious Land Capital
Read this first
Everybody's struggling to sell land right now.
That is not a knock on you or your marketing. We’re navigating the most hostile buyer environment in modern US history. As of NAR’s June 2026 report, existing-home sales are running around 4.09M annualized, sitting at the trough of the Global Financial Crisis era, and with roughly 38M more Americans than 2008, that makes this, per capita, the least active housing market in modern American history. When our own premium parcels sat without offers, local realtors were telling us land hadn’t moved this slowly in 10+ years.
This guide is the compressed version of what we deployed on a real project: a roughly 32-acre subdivide in the nicest parish in Louisiana, three child parcels with driveways and home sites cleared. The market turned on us immediately…buyers disappeared. We crossed 20, then 30+ site visits without a single written offer. Then we turned over every rock available to solve our disposition ("dispo," the industry’s word for the selling side of the business) problem, and all three parcels sold for roughly $606K combined gross, a 1.17x net MOIC (Multiple on Invested Capital), with every investor getting principal back plus their full preferred return. That happened in what I’d argue is the toughest national real estate market in the last century, with near 50% price cuts along the way…and we still exited profitably.
Who’s writing this: I’m Chris Duff. Serious Land Capital has funded over $6.5M worth of land deals with industry-leading 41% operating margins, with our own capital at title. I also serve as an AI advisor to companies cumulatively earning $50M+ a year, including as senior AI advisor at Callan Faulkner’s The Uncommon Business, and the AI systems we build show up all through this guide, because Serious News, the weekly brief this guide comes with, is part land and part AI on purpose. I write it personally every week, sharing the lessons while deals are live and the numbers once they close.
Serious means underwritten: AI can produce the analysis, but it can’t be wrong: it can’t take title, sign a purchase agreement, or lose its own money. We can, and we invested real time and capital into testing everything below, so you can learn from our experience and skip some of the mistakes we made along the way.
The frame that governs everything
The first test on any deal: can you lose money on this? You make your profit on the buy. Every single time. There are a limited number of levers you can pull on the dispo side, and the pricing lever is the ONLY one that is generally reliable. The margin we built into this acquisition is the only reason we had the flexibility to absorb a year of carrying costs, systematic and steep price cuts, and a market that turned immediately hostile, and still exit profitably. Rule #1 in investing, any asset class: don’t lose money.
Dispo can’t rescue a bad buy. But if your basis is right, the tactics below are field-tested ways to turn over every rock until you find where the buyer is sitting. Every one of them is backed by our own deals, including the plays that taught us what not to repeat.
How to use this guide
The tactics are ordered by effort and cost, not by category. Tier 1 you can start this week for near zero dollars. Tier 2 is this month, modest budget. Tier 3 is for when the market stops cooperating and you need to go hunt buyers directly. The multi-parcel plays are at the end, since not everyone is selling one.
These were run on rural acreage in Louisiana and Texas. Real estate is hyper-local, do your own research: weigh each tactic against your market and property type.
ILLUSTRATION: ONE-PAGE EFFORT VS. COST MATRIX OF THE 15 TACTICS
Tier 1 · This week · Near zero cost
Price and the close
Six moves that cost almost nothing and carry most of the outcome.
1Pull the pricing lever first
Price will solve ~95+% of all dispo problems…assuming buyers are active.
When we’re offloading in a soft market, I price-cut roughly every 14 to 21 days on parcels we need to move. Returning basis is the goal, anything beyond that is gravy. That cadence matters more than the size of any single cut, because it keeps you honest against the market instead of your hopes.
One warning from the same Louisiana subdivide: cutting into a vacuum where buyers simply aren’t looking burns through your pricing power without generating the attention that justifies it. If nobody is shopping, pause the cadence and shift to Tier 3 (going direct to buyers) until activity returns.
Put a recurring 14 day calendar reminder on every active listing. Every two weeks, cut or consciously decide not to. No drift.
2Re-comp your own property mid-hold
If a listing has sat for months, your original comps (the recently sold comparable properties your pricing was built on) are stale. Earlier this year we bought a rural Texas property at roughly $3K per acre, with comps through Q1 pointing to a reliable exit between $5.5K and $6K per acre. When it sat, I re-comped the whole thing from scratch. Fresh answer: closer to $4K per acre, a 20-30%+ swing in anticipated exit pricing in roughly two months.
The discipline that saved that deal happened at purchase: our basis, plus closing costs, still sits under the fresh-underwrite number (and we went under contract, profitably, with a buyer).
Critical for non-disclosure states (states where sold prices are not public record): when you re-comp, verify. We ALWAYS send our sold comps to the local listing realtor and ask them to verify the true exit pricing through MLS (the realtors-only Multiple Listing Service) access. And prep your own comp list: I can count on one hand the number of times a realtor, even experienced ones, have prepped a comp list that matched our internal one in quality and comprehensiveness. Trust, but verify.
If your listing is 60+ days old, re-run the comps as if the parcel crossed your desk fresh today, and reprice to the fresh number, not the number you need.
3Always counter (yes, even in fire sale mode)
Our rule is to always counter, even if we were ready to roll over at the slightest hint that a buyer would walk.
On the last parcel of our Louisiana subdivide project, the buyers came in at $180K and implied it was their highest and best. We countered at $209,750. Intentionally odd number, using game theory to imply another bid was already on the table. Internally, I gave our chance of the counter succeeding at less than 20%. The next day they came back at $200K, $20K above their initial offer.
Whoever’s most willing to walk away wins the negotiation. We were absolutely not willing to walk away (year-long hold, fire-sale mentality, break-even economics mapped out). All of that can be true…and you can still thoughtfully counter.
A benchmark while you wait for offers: the general rule of thumb in real estate is ~1 offer per 10 site visits, at least for houses. If you’re well past that with nothing written, the problem is usually price (see tactic 1).
Decide your walk-away number before the offer arrives, then counter above it. Odd numbers read as "another buyer exists."
4Carry on-site offer sheets
Pre-filled hard copies for every parcel, carried to every site visit. When someone loves the property, don’t let that momentum dissolve into a "I’ll send you a DocuSign later" situation. Our Louisiana realtor made it crystal clear to leads that the seller was very motivated, lowering the psychological threshold further.
Print offer sheets with the parcel details pre-filled and a blank price line. Hand them to your agent before every showing.
5Arm your listing realtor with actual closing scripts
We took key scripts from Alex Hormozi’s $100M closing playbook (Hormozi is a small business strategist and author of $100M Offers) and adapted them for real estate. The 1-to-10 commitment scale is excellent for surfacing objections ("What would it take to get you to a 10?"), and the spouse objection handling (presenting a non-binding offer to keep momentum) was critical. Our Louisiana listing realtor printed everything, adapted it, and started running it on site visits immediately. I made myself available for role play sessions. On our team, no one is above the work that is required.
Give your agent the 1-to-10 question word for word, and rehearse it with them once before the next showing.
6Keep your listing agreement short
We progressively shortened listing agreement renewals from six months to three months to two months. Not blame-driven (our realtor was responsive and executing everything we asked), just ensuring everyone involved felt the same urgency to move these properties.
At your next renewal, cut the term. Alignment beats loyalty theater.
Tier 2 · This month · Modest budget
Visibility
Make the property findable by every buyer already in motion.
7Physical signage, done properly
Our Louisiana realtor indicated that most of his land sales come from physical signage. Here’s the full setup we ran on the subdivide: a 3×5 foot sign with an aerial map of the value-add work at the main entrance, meaning the shared entry point a driver reaches first coming in from the county road, a separate smaller sign at each individual parcel’s own driveway entrance, and directional signs throughout town pointing to the property, with QR codes for the listing. We also worked to connect with a neighboring owner to place the main sign at the county road intersection for maximum visibility instead of our dead-end street.
That was rural Louisiana. Weigh it for your market: signage density and placement rules vary, but the principle (make the property findable by people who already drive past it) travels everywhere.
One main sign with an aerial and a QR code, one sign per parcel, directional signs at the nearest high-traffic intersections.
ILLUSTRATION: SIGNAGE PLACEMENT DIAGRAM
8List where land buyers actually look
For listings, we ran MLS plus Land.com for all three parcels. That’s the baseline, not the strategy. The listing itself has to reflect current conditions: when a partner suggested land can read as potentially protective in an inflationary environment, we updated our listing descriptions accordingly.
The photos work the same way. When development work wasn’t finished on our first parcel, we didn’t sit on the listing: our broker strategically photographed the most complete parcel while explaining in the listing that gravel installation was finishing up, with photo updates planned once work wrapped.
Run MLS and at least one land-specific platform, and reread your listing copy and photos every time you cut price. Stale copy under a fresh price wastes the cut.
9Work Facebook as its own channel
Two separate plays here, and they do different jobs.
First, groups: we joined every Louisiana land Facebook group, plus national land groups, and posted multiple variations (luxury angle, family-oriented, below-market pricing urgency messaging), with AI-generated content variations for A/B testing engagement and avoiding FB algorithm spam filters. Our land investor partner on the deal leveraged those same groups for extra visibility.
Second, boosted listings: roughly $100/week across four listings (we added the parent tract as well, priced at a lower price per acre (PPA) than the individual child parcels). (A boosted post is a regular Facebook post you pay Facebook to show to more people than it would reach on its own.) Honest read: it generated significant activity, but a huge pool of tire kickers. Likely a better tactic for land parcels more suited for owner-financing, which we offered, but no one seriously took us up on it.
Post free variations in every relevant land group first. Only boost if your parcel fits the buyer pool FB actually delivers.
10Squeeze your broker’s network
We worked with the premier and most well-connected brokerage group in the area, with the broker funneling calls from his other listings to our superior properties. The brokerage also brought in their social media team for bigger promotional pushes across their accounts. We also ran caution tape across the fresh driveways with signage pointing buyers to call the broker rather than self-touring. That one move protected the new gravel, kept every showing controlled, and gave us a clean record of every interested buyer.
Ask your broker directly: which of your current buyer calls could this parcel fit? Make your listing the answer to someone else’s inquiry.
11Call the listing agents from recent area sales
As the Louisiana land market re-activated in early 2026, we found similar parcels that recently closed, most at a higher PPA than ours (some after 400+ days on market), and had our realtor reach out to ask about any unmatched buyers. One agent said she had a list but never followed through, even after multiple touches. Limited control, but still worth the call.
Pull the last 6-12 months of area land sales, and have your agent call each listing agent about backup buyers who missed out.
Tier 3 · When the market stops cooperating
Hunt buyers directly
Stop waiting for the phone. Go find where the buyer is sitting.
12AI-optimized mailers to the right 500 people, not everyone
When our broker’s MLS hotspot data showed where people were repeatedly clicking our Louisiana listing, mailing everyone in those hotspots would have cost thousands we hadn’t budgeted. So we fed the challenge to AI with our budget, the hotspots, and the property profile, and it delivered a priority tier system:
- 60% of budget: recent acreage buyers near our price point (5-20 acres, last 3 years)
- 20%: nearest neighbors within 2 miles
- 10%: active rural builders and custom home GCs (general contractors)
- 10%: high-equity homeowners in hotspot suburbs
Sound logic: recent acreage buyers already proved they’ll spend at our price point, and high-equity suburban owners have HELOC (home equity line of credit) capacity for land purchases, or may want to go up-acreage. We pulled about 500 scrubbed and qualified prospects in our primary batch from DataTree, holding a few hundred secondary prospects for a follow-up mailer.
The postcard itself went through the same rigor. Our broker built a double-sided postcard showcasing beautiful images of the property and a well-designed QR code linking to all three parcels. We then had AI carefully review and grade the postcard on perceived marketability, and agreed with about 80% of its suggested changes. Three examples that made the final piece: anchoring at "$35K per acre" and letting buyers do the math for total cost, authoritative credibility builders like "#1 school district, per the Louisiana Department of Education," and a secondary CTA with a short vanity URL under the QR, since not everyone will scan.
Then the dual-touch layer: skip-trace (pulling phone numbers and contact info from public records) and call/text the top ~10% highest-priority prospects, careful to frame it as "Hey, did you hear about this premium land in the area?" versus trying to dig up buyers to sell at a discount. The top ~10% came directly from the AI priority ranking, weighted toward those recent acreage buyers. One structural note: the builder and GC bucket was deliberately excluded from this dual-touch list, because we took a separate, more direct route with them (next tactic) rather than waiting on postcards.
Straight talk on results: the postcards generated no direct traction on this project. The play earns its place here anyway, because the budget-first targeting process is the transferable part, and because of the timing caveat below.
One more thing worth knowing: we ran this in mid-2025, when AI models were far less capable than they are today. The same play now would run faster, cheaper, and likely land more precisely targeted lists with current models and their research capabilities.
Surgical beats spray-and-pray in wartime markets. And the meta-lesson: AI amplifies strategy, doesn’t replace judgment. We don’t treat its output as gospel, but it’s a valuable consultant.
Set the budget first, tier your list by likelihood to buy, mail the top batch, and personally call the top 10%.
ILLUSTRATION: 60/20/10/10 BUDGET-SPLIT CHART · POSTCARD SAMPLE
13Direct dials, texts, and emails to builders and LLCs
We ran direct dials and texts to builders and LLCs that had purchased land in the area (the same group we intentionally pulled out of the mailer’s dual-touch list above). Less costly than mailers, and the same honest outcome on this project: no closed buyer from it. The full walkthrough of how we set up the AI cold calls is in Episode 231 of the Get Serious podcast.
Pull every LLC and builder that bought land in your county in the last 2-3 years, and reach out with the property one-pager by call, text, or email when you can source one.
14Co-market a land-home package
Tons of our site-visit leads ultimately decided to go after a home purchase instead. So we explored the adaptation: partner with a builder, prep an initial home design, and co-market a land-home package so buyers get approved for a construction loan that exits us without waiting for the build. On our project it never fully materialized: the local builders were stretched thin, struggled to bring clients to the table, and follow-through was inconsistent. Still a solid strategy: I know operators who have executed it successfully.
If your buyer feedback keeps saying "we ended up looking at houses," bring the house to the land.
15Underwrite the contingent offer instead of rejecting it
Our first signed offer on the Louisiana subdivide was contingent on the buyers selling one of their existing homes. We had never accepted that type of contingency before, so I wanted to understand the underlying market for their home before agreeing. The data supported it: comps in their neighborhood were going pending within 3 to 14 days, their pricing looked fair relative to sales within the past month, and the contingency still allowed us to show the property and accept other offers, with the buyers holding right of first refusal (meaning if another buyer stepped up, they got first chance to firm up their offer or step aside).
Two smaller contract wins from the same deal: the initial offer didn’t specify buyer’s agent commission, so our realtor proposed 2.5% instead of the standard 3% (they accepted, saving us over $1,000), and the surveyor for a required remapping agreed to defer payment until close.
Before rejecting a contingent offer, comp the contingent property like it’s your own listing. Accept the contingency only if its market clears fast, and keep the right to sell.
If you’re selling a multi-parcel project
Three extra plays for multiple lots
Everything above applies to any parcel. These three are specific to projects with multiple lots, whatever your lot count. Our Louisiana project had three, so that’s the worked example throughout.
Sell distinct products, not identical lots. On our project, each parcel had different driveway lengths, home site locations, and clearing patterns, which gave us three distinct products instead of three identical lots, with a staggered listing strategy: we released the listings over roughly two weeks at different price points per acre, testing market response on the first before the premium lots followed. Differentiation beats commodity every time.
Use tiered pricing to create urgency. On the Louisiana subdivide, the flag lot (the parcel connected to the road by a long, narrow driveway strip; most premium, longest driveway, most development cost) listed at $450K. Middle parcel at $400K. Least premium lot dropped from $400K to $350K after testing market response, basically a $50K price cut to create urgency and alert the market to the other two properties being listed.
Budget the development like a skeptic. Whatever developers quote you on timeline, mentally multiply by 3x, and budget a 25% buffer above the high-end estimate. Ours came in at $130K against a $125K underwrite, only $5K over, even after cost overruns in both rounds of dirt work, because the buffer was in the budget before the first contractor was hired. That buffer is what kept us from scrambling for cash mid-project. And boots on the ground, meaning someone local who physically checks the project on a routine basis (for us, our Louisiana realtor doubled as de facto project manager), are non-negotiable: one week without that on-site presence led to a complete deviation from our instructions.
ILLUSTRATION: EXISTING DRONE SHOT, THE FLAG LOT DRIVEWAY
Where this leaves you
Start at Tier 1 this week. Price cadence, re-comped exit, counter rules, offer sheets, scripts, and a shorter listing agreement cost you almost nothing, and price alone solves ~95+% of dispo problems when buyers are active. Work down the list only as far as your market forces you to.
And remember where the game is actually won: you make your profit on the buy. Every single time. The tactics in this guide got three stuck parcels sold, but the margin built in at purchase is what gave the tactics room to work. Underwrite the next buy so the next sell has that same room.
Serious means underwritten, and we fund what we underwrite.
About Serious News
Serious News is my weekly newsletter: part land, part AI, written personally every week. Real deals with real numbers, shared while they’re live, plus the AI systems we actually run the business on. Thousands of serious investors read it, and it’s syndicated on REtipster.
Get the next issue at seriousland.capital/newsletter
Experienced operator with routine deal flow? Send us your best deals. We write checks from $50K+. We close 100% of deals we commit to. And we bring national underwriting experience to every transaction. Submit at seriousland.capital/new-deal-submission
